Restless (Buffy episode)
Encyclopedia
"Restless" is the 22nd episode and season finale of season four
of the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), and the 78th episode of the series overall. The episode was written and directed by the show's creator Joss Whedon
and originally aired on The WB
in the United States on May 23, 2000.
The premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that an adolescent girl, Buffy Summers
, is chosen by mystical forces and given superhuman powers to kill vampires, demons, and other evil creatures in the fictional town of Sunnydale
. She is supported by a close circle of family and friends, nicknamed the Scooby Gang. "Restless" centers on the dream
s of the four main characters after enduring an exhausting fight in the previous episode. The dreams are used to comment on the characters—their fears, their past and their possible future. Consistent with each dream is the presence of the First Slayer who hunts and kills them one by one until, in the final sequence, she is confronted and disempowered by Buffy.
The episode served as a coda to the fourth season instead of a climax
, as Whedon wanted to achieve something different for a season finale. Whedon experimented with several filming techniques to make the episode as dreamlike as possible. The episode also foreshadows upcoming events, most notably the first appearance of Buffy's sister Dawn
and Buffy's death. Buffy scholar Nikki Stafford calls the surrealistic episode "unprecedented in television", saying it is "so jam-packed with information that we'll probably be seeing allusions to it for the rest of the series", and referring to it as a "mysterious lead-in to the emotionally turbulent season five". "Restless" received high praise from critics upon airing, particularly for its character development, visual direction, and wit. It is frequently noted as one of the best episodes of the series.
is a teenager who, at the age of fifteen, was chosen by mystical forces to be the latest Slayer, a girl endowed with superhuman powers to fight and defeat vampires, demons, and other evil forces. After moving with her mother, Joyce
(Kristine Sutherland
), to the fictional town of Sunnydale
, she befriends Willow Rosenberg
(Alyson Hannigan
) and Xander Harris
(Nicholas Brendon
), who join her in the struggle against evil. They are guided by Buffy's "Watcher", Rupert Giles
(Anthony Stewart Head), who is well-versed in demonology and is responsible for Buffy's training as a Slayer. The group collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang. During season two, Willow begins to experiment with magic, eventually becoming a formidable witch.
Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) presents an overall story arc which episodes tie into, as well as a specific manifestation of evil known as the Big Bad
. As noted by Buffy scholar Roz Kaveney, episodes in the fourth season address authority, order, and the estrangement from the self and others as Buffy and her friends take on new roles after high school. An ongoing theme in the series is Buffy's complex relationship to her destiny as the current Slayer and how she uniquely expresses this role, and this plot element is further explored in season four in general, and in the episode "Restless" in particular.
Season four begins with Buffy and Willow starting college, attending U.C. Sunnydale, while Xander works at a series of odd jobs and begins dating Anya Jenkins
(Emma Caulfield
), who lived for 1,100 years as a vengeance demon
before losing her powers and getting stuck in the body of a teenager. In the fourth season, Willow becomes romantically involved with fellow-student Tara Maclay
(Amber Benson
), an experienced witch. The Big Bad in season four is the result of the work of a covert military force called "The Initiative" who are capturing and performing experiments on vampires and demons in Sunnydale. Buffy and her friends discover that chief amongst these experiments is the creation of a human-cyber-demonoid hybrid known as Adam (George Hertzberg
), whose programming has gone terribly wrong, leading him to wreak havoc on the town. Buffy's challenge is to find a way to disempower him, something she and the Scoobies achieve in the penultimate episode of season four, "Primeval". In order to do this, the four magically join their essences together to create a single "super Slayer"; while the others perform a ritual, Buffy confronts and defeats Adam while mystically empowered with Giles' mind, Xander's heart, and Willow's spirit aiding her. The ritual employs four tarot-like cards: Manus (meaning hands) represents Buffy, Sophus (meaning teacher) represents Giles, Animus (meaning courage, or heart) represents Xander, and Spiritus (meaning spirit and magical power) represents Willow. These symbols will become relevant to the central motif in each of the episode's four dream sequences.
. They quickly fall asleep and are each confronted by the First Slayer in their dreams.
Willow's dream opens with Willow painting Sappho
's love poem, Hymn to Aphrodite, in Greek onto Tara
's back. She then finds herself on the Sunnydale High school stage, about to perform in a radically changed Death of a Salesman
. Willow realizes with increasing uneasiness that she knows neither her lines nor her role. Buffy then takes Willow to stand in front of a classroom in the same nerdy clothes she wore in "Welcome to the Hellmouth
" and "The Harvest" at the beginning of the series. Xander mocks her as she nervously begins her book review. Oz and Tara—Willow's ex-boyfriend and current girlfriend—flirt with each other while watching Willow do her book report. Suddenly, Willow is attacked and has the life sucked out of her by the First Slayer.
Xander's dream begins when he wakes on Buffy's couch. After excusing himself to use the restroom, he finds himself the object of an attempted seduction by Joyce
. In the restroom, he starts to unzip, then realizes that the bathroom is attached to a large white room with many men in white coats ready to observe and take notes on his performance. He then meets Buffy, Giles, and Spike in a playground where Giles tells him that Spike is being trained as a Watcher while Buffy plays in a sandbox. Xander then finds himself in an ice cream truck with Anya
; Willow and Tara (wearing skimpy clothing and heavy make-up) are in the back, and invite him to join them. He goes back, only to end up in his basement. He goes to the university and comes across Giles, who starts revealing the reason for the dream, but speaks in French. Xander next finds himself in a reenactment of the Apocalypse Now scene between a captive Captain Benjamin Willard
and Colonel Walter Kurtz
, with Principal Snyder
as Kurtz. Throughout the sequence Xander ends up in his basement again and again, chased by an unseen pursuer, who is revealed as the First Slayer when she tears his heart out.
Giles' dream begins with Giles swinging a watch in front of Buffy. They are in Giles' apartment, which has been stripped of furniture but for a chair and a bed. She laughs, and Giles' dream cuts to a family scene with Buffy and his girlfriend Olivia at a fairground. Quicker than the others to understand that something is wrong, he confronts Spike, who is posing for a photo-shoot in his crypt. In The Bronze
, he meets Anya failing as a stand-up comic, and Willow and Xander (with a bloody chest wound), who warn him of their attacker. He breaks into song, giving suggestions on how to deal with what hunts them, but when the sound system breaks down, he crawls backstage. He begins to realize his pursuer is the First Slayer, just as she scalps him.
In the final dream sequence, Buffy is woken by Anya in her dorm room. She then finds herself in her room at home, where Tara speaks cryptically about the future. At the university, Buffy talks to her mother, who lives in the walls, then meets Riley
at the Initiative. He has been promoted to Surgeon General
and is drawing up plans with Adam (now in ordinary human form) for world domination. The three of them are interrupted by a demon attack, and Riley and Adam start to make a pillow fort. When Buffy finds her weapons bag, the only thing in it is mud, which she smears on her face. She is then transported to the desert and finally confronts the pre-verbal First Slayer; Tara is present to speak for her. Through Tara the First Slayer tells Buffy that she cannot have friends and must work alone, which Buffy rejects. The Slayers fight in the desert and then in Buffy's living room next to her dying friends until Buffy realizes that she can stop the fight mentally by simply ignoring the First Slayer. She refuses to fight and walks away from the First Slayer; the First Slayer vanishes, and everybody wakes up.
After they wake up, the four of them then discuss the significance of having tapped into the power of the First Slayer, and Buffy privately recalls Tara's words from her dream as she looks into her bedroom.
wanted to end season four differently. The penultimate episode, "Primeval", had concluded the Initiative storyline, but Whedon felt the season's overall story arc had not been as cohesive as it could have been, and therefore chose to create an episode to act as a "grace note" to the season, an episode which would comment on each of the four main characters and what they had just been through. While talking about the writing of the episode, Whedon said it had been like writing poetry, a process he found "liberating and strange". Like the earlier "Hush" — an episode with almost no dialogue — he viewed the episode as an exercise in form and writing, and what it means to write. The episode has no real structure, which was a departure for Whedon, as everything he had written before was constructed before even starting the script. Yet despite its fragmented style, the episode unfolds coherently in four discrete acts, each act comprising one character's dream.
techniques to achieve the dreamlike quality of "Restless". He used tracking shot
s with a Steadicam
to follow the characters from place to place, creating a flow in the way of real dreams, where there are no logical connections between places and things. In Giles' dream, he walks from a carnival grounds into Spike's crypt, then through a corridor and straight into The Bronze, three locations not related to one another. Whedon was able to do this by simply having actor Anthony Stewart Head walk through the sets as they were built; this effortlessly created a sense of dreamlike dislocation. Another example of this occurs when, in Xander's dream, he walks from the front of the moving ice cream van towards the back, crawls up and over some boxes, through a window, and drops into his basement. In the theater scene during Willow's dream, a Frazier lens
was used to provide a large depth of field
, allowing both the foreground and background to be in focus at the same time, while in Xander's dream, as he moves from room to room in Buffy's house to the university dorm rooms, Whedon used a 17 mm lens to give a sense of motion as the camera passes by walls. Whedon also used unusual framing for shots, often leaving much of the frame empty, with a character being placed near the bottom or off to the side. The scenes in Spike's crypt, part of Giles' dream, were shot in black-and-white
to emphasize that Spike is seen as "an old 30s movie villain".
The outdoor scene in which Xander sees Buffy in the sandbox was intentionally overexposed
, intensifying the foreground and blowing out the background, making the sky look white; flash frames were also used in the shot of Buffy in the desert. Whedon allowed some shots to last far longer than is common in a television episode; this cinematic technique allowed the images to take on meaning. Highly stylized lighting is used throughout Xander's dream. In the university hallway the scene is lit with green and orange gels
, while the almost shot-for-shot re-creation of the Apocalypse Now section is lit with carefully controlled spotlights which allow the background to fall out to black. Whedon cites The Limey
as an inspiration for the unnaturally colored university sequence, and had the scene from Apocalypse Now playing on tape during filming to ensure as close a match as possible for that sequence. When Xander is driving the ice cream truck with Anya, the backgrounds outside the car intentionally look fake, to give a sense of stillness where there should be motion. Whedon originally wanted to use rear-screen projection
for the driving scene, but had to utilize greenscreen instead, as rear-screen projection would be difficult to set up on their stages. Some special effects shots came about by accident; in his commentary Whedon explains that when Buffy smeared the mud all over her face, it looked as though she was giving herself a facial. He therefore dissolved the shot into a negative image
, creating intense colors that made the shot more interesting.
Dynamic editing contributed to the surrealistic nature of the episode. Abrupt cuts from close-up to extreme wide angles and sudden shifts from normal speed to super slow-motion are used in Buffy's dream: several sequences become slow-motion partway through them, then revert to normal speed as they continue. Xander's dream features mismatches between sound and image: characters are sometimes shown not speaking even as their voices are heard. Additionally, silence is used frequently, to both reflect the characters' disorientation and to unsettle the audience. Whedon cited films by Steven Soderbergh
as his main inspirations for the odd editing, especially The Limey and The Underneath. He also listed Orson Welles
' version of The Trial
and Stanley Kubrick
's Eyes Wide Shut
as inspirations for many of his shooting and editing decisions.
It was during the filming of this episode that Michelle Trachtenberg
, who would go onto play Buffy's sister Dawn
in season five, first visited the set. Sarah Michelle Gellar
had worked with her previously and suggested to Joss Whedon
that she read for the part of Dawn.
, and performed by Four Star Mary
. Beck appears in the scene playing the piano, while members of Four Star Mary play the other instruments. Throughout the first four seasons of the series, Four Star Mary were the real band behind character Oz's fictional band, Dingoes Ate My Baby
.
In Willow's dream she struggles to find her place in the school theater production of Death of a Salesman, while her friends and classmates are apparently fully costumed, prepared, and ready to go on stage. Her confusion represents her lack of self-confidence, her fear that she still does not fit in or have a place in the world, unlike those around her, who are competent and know what is going on. She wears ordinary clothes, but the others repeatedly comment on the excellence of her "costume", a reference to her fear that her friends do not see what she has grown into, but rather what she was when younger: nerdy and awkward. This fear is confirmed when Buffy strips off her shirt and jeans, revealing the same unfashionable turtleneck and corduroy jumper she wore in episode one of the series, four years earlier, before her demon-fighting experiences and study of magic increased her confidence and competence. Willow stands anxiously at the front of the class, trying to read a paper, while her classmates express their boredom with listening to her and Oz whispers into Tara's ear, until she is attacked by the First Slayer and her breath is sucked out of her body.
Whedon stated that the maze of red curtains on the stage in Willow's dream are not a direct homage to Twin Peaks
, as some have posited, but rather represent the safety and comfort of being with her girlfriend Tara, and are a sexual metaphor as well.
The main theme of Xander's dream is his sense of failure and of being left behind as his friends move ahead in life. His fear that he is stuck is reiterated throughout his dream by his inability to escape his basement bedroom in his parents' home. No matter where his dream takes him, he ends up back in the basement. As the only one of the Scoobies not in college, he feels anxiety about his ability to understand and keep up with ideas and conversations, a fear which is realized when he goes to the university, a place he already feels excluded from, and finds that he cannot understand what people say to him. Aware that he is being chased and is in danger, he asks Giles what is happening but cannot understand his answer, nor what Anya says to him, as they are both inexplicably speaking French. He exclaims, "I don't understand!" During his dream both Buffy and Willow tell him, "I'm way ahead of you," underscoring his fear that this is really the case.
Giles' dream presents a choice: either to remain a father figure and Watcher to Buffy, or to begin his own life, represented by the presence of his girlfriend Olivia, who pushes an empty baby stroller. During this part of his dream, Buffy is dressed as a child, with pigtails, and is unable to throw a ball straight without his help and instruction, an indication of his fear that she will be unable to do her job without his guidance. Later, Olivia is seen weeping, while the baby stroller has been overturned and abandoned, signifying elements of his unfulfilled life, such as marriage and children. Later, in The Bronze, he is explaining the reason they are all being stalked and attacked, performing his job as Watcher, but his singing this information represents his unfulfilled longing to be a musician, something he's been exploring privately throughout the season.
The major theme of Buffy's dream is her fear of the personal cost of her life as a Slayer, the isolation and loneliness she is forced to endure. This theme of aloneness is reiterated by several shots in which she is alone in the frame, most notably the wide shot of her in the vast and empty desert. Another source of anxiety is her relationship with her current boyfriend, Riley, whom she finds plotting world domination with Adam in his original, human, form. She fears what Riley could turn into as a result of his alliance with the military. She also fears the destabilizing effect of this alliance on their relationship, and the destabilizing effect of this relationship on her life as the slayer. She is shown putting mud on her face, mimicking the mud mask of the primal, First Slayer. By the end of her encounter in the desert with the First Slayer, Buffy realizes that she does not have to be entirely alone, that it is her closeness to friends and family that makes her a great Slayer, and once she experiences this revelation, the efforts of the First Slayer to continue to engage her in battle become fruitless and increasingly comical. The dream finally ends in a mundane way, as Buffy refuses to accept a tragic climax and instead insists on normality in her life.
All of the many elements in the dream sequences have meaning, with the exception of the Cheese Man. Whedon explains: "...the Cheese Man—meaningless. Why? Because I needed something in the show that was meaningless, because there is always something in the dream that doesn't make any sense at all. In this case it was the Cheese Man. He confounds everybody because of that, and people ascribe him meaning. This to me means that we're being successful, because this means they're not worried about everything else, which means they sort of did understand most other things."
, Faith says "Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0"; Buffy would die two years (730 days) later in "The Gift". This number appears (as 7:30) on a clock in Buffy's dream in "Restless". Buffy says, "It's so late." Tara replies, "Oh... that clock's completely wrong." A year has now passed, making the previous number of days to her death incorrect. When Buffy leaves the room, Tara tells her, "Be back before Dawn
." The character Dawn appears in the next episode. Tara's words to Buffy, "You think you know what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun." are repeated by Dracula to Buffy in the following episode ("Buffy vs. Dracula"). In Xander's dream, Giles and Spike swing together on a swing set, with Spike wearing a tweed
jacket. Giles comments, "Spike's like a son to me." In "Tabula Rasa" (season six), when the characters lose their memories, Spike wears the same tweed jacket and believes Giles is his father.
list of the 25 best Whedonverse episodes—including episodes from Buffy, as well as Angel
, Firefly
and Dollhouse
—"Restless" placed at #20, where they called it "Visually lush and trippy," and said, "...it reestablished that this genre show was really and truly a deeply affecting character drama with a delightfully bent sense of humor." At Syfy
.co.uk, the episode was listed as the seventh best episode in their list of the top 10 Buffy episodes, saying "This surreal episode marks the show's turning point, as it moved from a very well-executed urban fantasy drama series to something more creative, more thoughtful, and more surprising than pretty much anything else on television." In The Futon Critic's list of the 20 best episodes of 2000, the episode was placed at #1, with the author calling it an even more daring episode than "Hush", another acclaimed episode from the fourth season.
At Slayage.com
, the Online Journal of Buffy Studies, author Daniel Erenberg placed the episode as the second best of the series; stating that the episode "lends itself to infinite interpretations. No one watches it the same way. That's the mark of a true masterpiece." When Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
reviewed "Restless" in 2009, after beginning his first look at the series in 2008, he praised Joss Whedon
's ability to represent what dreams are actually like. The A.V. Club also included "Restless" as an "essential episode" of the series in their list of the best TV series of the 2000s, in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer placed at #25. The episode was listed as #1 in Daily Kos
' list of the top 10 episodes of the series, and the episode was listed as the second best episode featuring dream sequences by USA Today
. In series creator Joss Whedon's own list of his favorite episodes, he includes "Restless", saying "Most people sort of shake their heads at it. It was different, but not pointless."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 4)
- Crew :Series creator Joss Whedon served as executive producer and showrunner, and wrote and directed four episodes including the season premiere and finale. Marti Noxon was promoted to supervising producer and wrote or co-wrote five episodes. Jane Espenson was promoted to co-producer and wrote or...
of the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), and the 78th episode of the series overall. The episode was written and directed by the show's creator Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
and originally aired on The WB
The WB Television Network
The WB Television Network is a former television network in the United States that was launched on January 11, 1995 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros...
in the United States on May 23, 2000.
The premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that an adolescent girl, Buffy Summers
Buffy Summers
Buffy Summers is a fictional character from Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. She first appeared in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer before going on to appear in the television series and subsequent comic book of the same name...
, is chosen by mystical forces and given superhuman powers to kill vampires, demons, and other evil creatures in the fictional town of Sunnydale
Sunnydale
Sunnydale, California is the fictional setting for the U.S. television drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Series creator Joss Whedon conceived the town as a representation of a generic California city, as well as a narrative parody of the all-too-serene towns typical in traditional horror...
. She is supported by a close circle of family and friends, nicknamed the Scooby Gang. "Restless" centers on the dream
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
s of the four main characters after enduring an exhausting fight in the previous episode. The dreams are used to comment on the characters—their fears, their past and their possible future. Consistent with each dream is the presence of the First Slayer who hunts and kills them one by one until, in the final sequence, she is confronted and disempowered by Buffy.
The episode served as a coda to the fourth season instead of a climax
Climax (narrative)
The Climax is the point in the story where the main character's point of view changes, or the most exciting/action filled part of the story. It also known has the main turning point in the story...
, as Whedon wanted to achieve something different for a season finale. Whedon experimented with several filming techniques to make the episode as dreamlike as possible. The episode also foreshadows upcoming events, most notably the first appearance of Buffy's sister Dawn
Dawn Summers
Dawn Summers is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and introduced by Marti Noxon and David Fury on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg. She made her debut in the premiere episode of the show's fifth season, and subsequently appeared in every...
and Buffy's death. Buffy scholar Nikki Stafford calls the surrealistic episode "unprecedented in television", saying it is "so jam-packed with information that we'll probably be seeing allusions to it for the rest of the series", and referring to it as a "mysterious lead-in to the emotionally turbulent season five". "Restless" received high praise from critics upon airing, particularly for its character development, visual direction, and wit. It is frequently noted as one of the best episodes of the series.
Background
In the series, Buffy SummersBuffy Summers
Buffy Summers is a fictional character from Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. She first appeared in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer before going on to appear in the television series and subsequent comic book of the same name...
is a teenager who, at the age of fifteen, was chosen by mystical forces to be the latest Slayer, a girl endowed with superhuman powers to fight and defeat vampires, demons, and other evil forces. After moving with her mother, Joyce
Joyce Summers
Joyce Summers is a fictional character in the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Played by Kristine Sutherland, Joyce is the mother of the main character, Buffy Summers . Joyce appears regularly from the first episode until the character's death in the fifth season episode "The...
(Kristine Sutherland
Kristine Sutherland
Kristine Sutherland is an actress best known for her role as Buffy Summers' mother Joyce Summers on the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer.-Early life:...
), to the fictional town of Sunnydale
Sunnydale
Sunnydale, California is the fictional setting for the U.S. television drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Series creator Joss Whedon conceived the town as a representation of a generic California city, as well as a narrative parody of the all-too-serene towns typical in traditional horror...
, she befriends Willow Rosenberg
Willow Rosenberg
Willow Rosenberg is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed throughout the TV series by Alyson Hannigan...
(Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Lee Hannigan is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Willow Rosenberg in the cult classic television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michelle Flaherty in three American Pie films, and Lily Aldrin on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.-Early life:Hannigan was born in...
) and Xander Harris
Xander Harris
Alexander LaVelle "Xander" Harris is a fictional character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as in numerous items in the series Expanded Universe, such as comic books, tie-in novels and video games...
(Nicholas Brendon
Nicholas Brendon
Nicholas Brendon , is an actor best known for his character Xander Harris in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer .-Early life:...
), who join her in the struggle against evil. They are guided by Buffy's "Watcher", Rupert Giles
Rupert Giles
Rupert Giles is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The character is portrayed by Anthony Stewart Head. He serves as Buffy Summers' mentor and surrogate father figure...
(Anthony Stewart Head), who is well-versed in demonology and is responsible for Buffy's training as a Slayer. The group collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang. During season two, Willow begins to experiment with magic, eventually becoming a formidable witch.
Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) presents an overall story arc which episodes tie into, as well as a specific manifestation of evil known as the Big Bad
Big Bad
Big Bad is a term originally used by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series to describe a major recurring adversary, usually the chief villain or antagonist in a particular broadcast season...
. As noted by Buffy scholar Roz Kaveney, episodes in the fourth season address authority, order, and the estrangement from the self and others as Buffy and her friends take on new roles after high school. An ongoing theme in the series is Buffy's complex relationship to her destiny as the current Slayer and how she uniquely expresses this role, and this plot element is further explored in season four in general, and in the episode "Restless" in particular.
Season four begins with Buffy and Willow starting college, attending U.C. Sunnydale, while Xander works at a series of odd jobs and begins dating Anya Jenkins
Anya Jenkins
Anya is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She also appears in the comic book series based on the television show. Portrayed by Emma Caulfield, the character appears as a guest star in the third and fourth seasons of the show before...
(Emma Caulfield
Emma Caulfield
Emma Caulfield is an American actress best known for her role as ex-demon Anya Jenkins on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as Susan Keats, a love interest of Brandon Walsh's on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210.-Early life:Emma Caulfield was born Emma Chukker in San...
), who lived for 1,100 years as a vengeance demon
Vengeance demon
Vengeance demons are a group of beings that appear in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They are immortals who travel the world exacting vengeance on behalf of victims, such as scorned men, women or neglected children...
before losing her powers and getting stuck in the body of a teenager. In the fourth season, Willow becomes romantically involved with fellow-student Tara Maclay
Tara Maclay
Tara Maclay is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson from the fourth to the sixth season until the character's death. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love...
(Amber Benson
Amber Benson
Amber Nicole Benson is an American actress, writer, film director, and film producer. She is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but has also directed, produced and starred in her own films Chance and Lovers, Liars & Lunatics...
), an experienced witch. The Big Bad in season four is the result of the work of a covert military force called "The Initiative" who are capturing and performing experiments on vampires and demons in Sunnydale. Buffy and her friends discover that chief amongst these experiments is the creation of a human-cyber-demonoid hybrid known as Adam (George Hertzberg
George Hertzberg
George Hertzberg is an American actor best known for his portrayal of the cyber-demonic soldier Adam in the fourth season of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
), whose programming has gone terribly wrong, leading him to wreak havoc on the town. Buffy's challenge is to find a way to disempower him, something she and the Scoobies achieve in the penultimate episode of season four, "Primeval". In order to do this, the four magically join their essences together to create a single "super Slayer"; while the others perform a ritual, Buffy confronts and defeats Adam while mystically empowered with Giles' mind, Xander's heart, and Willow's spirit aiding her. The ritual employs four tarot-like cards: Manus (meaning hands) represents Buffy, Sophus (meaning teacher) represents Giles, Animus (meaning courage, or heart) represents Xander, and Spiritus (meaning spirit and magical power) represents Willow. These symbols will become relevant to the central motif in each of the episode's four dream sequences.
Plot
Following their victory over Adam, Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles meet at Buffy's to relax with movies, including Apocalypse NowApocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
. They quickly fall asleep and are each confronted by the First Slayer in their dreams.
Willow's dream opens with Willow painting Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
's love poem, Hymn to Aphrodite, in Greek onto Tara
Tara Maclay
Tara Maclay is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson from the fourth to the sixth season until the character's death. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love...
's back. She then finds herself on the Sunnydale High school stage, about to perform in a radically changed Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949, the original production ran for a total of 742 performances.-Plot :Willy Loman...
. Willow realizes with increasing uneasiness that she knows neither her lines nor her role. Buffy then takes Willow to stand in front of a classroom in the same nerdy clothes she wore in "Welcome to the Hellmouth
Welcome to the Hellmouth
"Welcome to the Hellmouth" is the series premiere of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This episode and "The Harvest" were originally aired as a two-part series premiere on The WB Television Network...
" and "The Harvest" at the beginning of the series. Xander mocks her as she nervously begins her book review. Oz and Tara—Willow's ex-boyfriend and current girlfriend—flirt with each other while watching Willow do her book report. Suddenly, Willow is attacked and has the life sucked out of her by the First Slayer.
Xander's dream begins when he wakes on Buffy's couch. After excusing himself to use the restroom, he finds himself the object of an attempted seduction by Joyce
Joyce Summers
Joyce Summers is a fictional character in the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Played by Kristine Sutherland, Joyce is the mother of the main character, Buffy Summers . Joyce appears regularly from the first episode until the character's death in the fifth season episode "The...
. In the restroom, he starts to unzip, then realizes that the bathroom is attached to a large white room with many men in white coats ready to observe and take notes on his performance. He then meets Buffy, Giles, and Spike in a playground where Giles tells him that Spike is being trained as a Watcher while Buffy plays in a sandbox. Xander then finds himself in an ice cream truck with Anya
Anya Jenkins
Anya is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She also appears in the comic book series based on the television show. Portrayed by Emma Caulfield, the character appears as a guest star in the third and fourth seasons of the show before...
; Willow and Tara (wearing skimpy clothing and heavy make-up) are in the back, and invite him to join them. He goes back, only to end up in his basement. He goes to the university and comes across Giles, who starts revealing the reason for the dream, but speaks in French. Xander next finds himself in a reenactment of the Apocalypse Now scene between a captive Captain Benjamin Willard
Benjamin L. Willard
Captain Benjamin L. Willard is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, and is portrayed by American actor Martin Sheen. His character is loosely based on the character Charles Marlow from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. He is a...
and Colonel Walter Kurtz
Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)
Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat...
, with Principal Snyder
Principal Snyder
Principal R. Snyder is a fictional character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Armin Shimerman. Shimerman originally auditioned for the role of Flutie, but lost that role to Ken Lerner...
as Kurtz. Throughout the sequence Xander ends up in his basement again and again, chased by an unseen pursuer, who is revealed as the First Slayer when she tears his heart out.
Giles' dream begins with Giles swinging a watch in front of Buffy. They are in Giles' apartment, which has been stripped of furniture but for a chair and a bed. She laughs, and Giles' dream cuts to a family scene with Buffy and his girlfriend Olivia at a fairground. Quicker than the others to understand that something is wrong, he confronts Spike, who is posing for a photo-shoot in his crypt. In The Bronze
The Bronze
The Bronze is a fictional nightclub in Sunnydale, the fictional setting for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of 144 episodes of the series, 66 have at least one scene at the Bronze, not including its appearance in the unaired pilot....
, he meets Anya failing as a stand-up comic, and Willow and Xander (with a bloody chest wound), who warn him of their attacker. He breaks into song, giving suggestions on how to deal with what hunts them, but when the sound system breaks down, he crawls backstage. He begins to realize his pursuer is the First Slayer, just as she scalps him.
In the final dream sequence, Buffy is woken by Anya in her dorm room. She then finds herself in her room at home, where Tara speaks cryptically about the future. At the university, Buffy talks to her mother, who lives in the walls, then meets Riley
Riley Finn
Riley Finn is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Portrayed by Marc Blucas, Riley was introduced in the 1999 season four premiere episode, "The Freshman", and Blucas was part of the series credited cast for the second part of season four...
at the Initiative. He has been promoted to Surgeon General
Surgeon General of the United States
The Surgeon General of the United States is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government...
and is drawing up plans with Adam (now in ordinary human form) for world domination. The three of them are interrupted by a demon attack, and Riley and Adam start to make a pillow fort. When Buffy finds her weapons bag, the only thing in it is mud, which she smears on her face. She is then transported to the desert and finally confronts the pre-verbal First Slayer; Tara is present to speak for her. Through Tara the First Slayer tells Buffy that she cannot have friends and must work alone, which Buffy rejects. The Slayers fight in the desert and then in Buffy's living room next to her dying friends until Buffy realizes that she can stop the fight mentally by simply ignoring the First Slayer. She refuses to fight and walks away from the First Slayer; the First Slayer vanishes, and everybody wakes up.
After they wake up, the four of them then discuss the significance of having tapped into the power of the First Slayer, and Buffy privately recalls Tara's words from her dream as she looks into her bedroom.
Production and writing
Previous seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had ended with an action episode which tied up all the threads of the season's main plot line, but series creator Joss WhedonJoss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
wanted to end season four differently. The penultimate episode, "Primeval", had concluded the Initiative storyline, but Whedon felt the season's overall story arc had not been as cohesive as it could have been, and therefore chose to create an episode to act as a "grace note" to the season, an episode which would comment on each of the four main characters and what they had just been through. While talking about the writing of the episode, Whedon said it had been like writing poetry, a process he found "liberating and strange". Like the earlier "Hush" — an episode with almost no dialogue — he viewed the episode as an exercise in form and writing, and what it means to write. The episode has no real structure, which was a departure for Whedon, as everything he had written before was constructed before even starting the script. Yet despite its fragmented style, the episode unfolds coherently in four discrete acts, each act comprising one character's dream.
Filming techniques
Whedon used a variety of cinematographicCinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
techniques to achieve the dreamlike quality of "Restless". He used tracking shot
Tracking shot
In motion picture terminology, a tracking shot is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken...
s with a Steadicam
Steadicam
A Steadicam is a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement, allowing a smooth shot even when moving quickly over an uneven surface...
to follow the characters from place to place, creating a flow in the way of real dreams, where there are no logical connections between places and things. In Giles' dream, he walks from a carnival grounds into Spike's crypt, then through a corridor and straight into The Bronze, three locations not related to one another. Whedon was able to do this by simply having actor Anthony Stewart Head walk through the sets as they were built; this effortlessly created a sense of dreamlike dislocation. Another example of this occurs when, in Xander's dream, he walks from the front of the moving ice cream van towards the back, crawls up and over some boxes, through a window, and drops into his basement. In the theater scene during Willow's dream, a Frazier lens
Frazier lens
The Frazier lens is a special camera lens designed by photographer Jim Frazier. The Frazier lens provides a massive depth of field, allowing the foreground and background of an image to be in focus. Frazier's lenses have been widely used in Hollywood and wildlife cinematography...
was used to provide a large depth of field
Depth of field
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image...
, allowing both the foreground and background to be in focus at the same time, while in Xander's dream, as he moves from room to room in Buffy's house to the university dorm rooms, Whedon used a 17 mm lens to give a sense of motion as the camera passes by walls. Whedon also used unusual framing for shots, often leaving much of the frame empty, with a character being placed near the bottom or off to the side. The scenes in Spike's crypt, part of Giles' dream, were shot in black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
to emphasize that Spike is seen as "an old 30s movie villain".
The outdoor scene in which Xander sees Buffy in the sandbox was intentionally overexposed
Exposure (photography)
In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the photographic medium during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value and scene luminance over a specified area.In photographic jargon, an exposure...
, intensifying the foreground and blowing out the background, making the sky look white; flash frames were also used in the shot of Buffy in the desert. Whedon allowed some shots to last far longer than is common in a television episode; this cinematic technique allowed the images to take on meaning. Highly stylized lighting is used throughout Xander's dream. In the university hallway the scene is lit with green and orange gels
Color gel
A color gel or color filter , also known as lighting gel or simply gel, is a transparent colored material that is used in theatre, event production, photography, videography and cinematography to color light and for color correction...
, while the almost shot-for-shot re-creation of the Apocalypse Now section is lit with carefully controlled spotlights which allow the background to fall out to black. Whedon cites The Limey
The Limey
The Limey is a 1999 American crime film, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Lem Dobbs. The film features Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Peter Fonda and Barry Newman.Filming locations included Big Sur and L.A.-Plot:...
as an inspiration for the unnaturally colored university sequence, and had the scene from Apocalypse Now playing on tape during filming to ensure as close a match as possible for that sequence. When Xander is driving the ice cream truck with Anya, the backgrounds outside the car intentionally look fake, to give a sense of stillness where there should be motion. Whedon originally wanted to use rear-screen projection
Rear projection effect
Rear projection is part of many in-camera effects cinematic techniquesin film production for combining foreground performances with pre-filmed backgrounds. It was widely used for many years in driving scenes, or to show other forms of "distant" background motion...
for the driving scene, but had to utilize greenscreen instead, as rear-screen projection would be difficult to set up on their stages. Some special effects shots came about by accident; in his commentary Whedon explains that when Buffy smeared the mud all over her face, it looked as though she was giving herself a facial. He therefore dissolved the shot into a negative image
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...
, creating intense colors that made the shot more interesting.
Dynamic editing contributed to the surrealistic nature of the episode. Abrupt cuts from close-up to extreme wide angles and sudden shifts from normal speed to super slow-motion are used in Buffy's dream: several sequences become slow-motion partway through them, then revert to normal speed as they continue. Xander's dream features mismatches between sound and image: characters are sometimes shown not speaking even as their voices are heard. Additionally, silence is used frequently, to both reflect the characters' disorientation and to unsettle the audience. Whedon cited films by Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
as his main inspirations for the odd editing, especially The Limey and The Underneath. He also listed Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
' version of The Trial
The Trial (1962 film)
The Trial is a 1962 film directed by Orson Welles, who also wrote the screenplay based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka...
and Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr...
as inspirations for many of his shooting and editing decisions.
Cast
Besides the main cast, the episode features several appearances by returning and currently recurring characters, mostly within the dream sequences.- Seth GreenSeth GreenSeth Benjamin Green is an American actor, comedian, voice actor, and television producer. He is well known for his role as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Dr. Evil's son Scott in the Austin Powers series of comedy films, Mitch Miller in That '70s Show, and the voice of Chris...
, who left the series earlier in the season, made a brief appearance as Oz in Willow's dream. - Armin ShimermanArmin ShimermanArmin Shimerman is an American actor. Shimerman is best known for playing the Ferengi bartender Quark in the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Principal Snyder in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kramer's caddy Stan on Seinfeld, voicing Dr. Nefarious in the Ratchet & Clank series, and Andrew...
, whose character Principal SnyderPrincipal SnyderPrincipal R. Snyder is a fictional character in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Armin Shimerman. Shimerman originally auditioned for the role of Flutie, but lost that role to Ken Lerner...
was killed off in the season three finaleGraduation Day (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)"Graduation Day" is the season finale of the WB Television Network's third season of the drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, consisting of the twenty-first and twenty-second episodes. They are also the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth episodes of the show overall...
, appears as KurtzKurtz (Heart of Darkness)Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat...
in the Apocalypse Now scene. - Amber BensonAmber BensonAmber Nicole Benson is an American actress, writer, film director, and film producer. She is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but has also directed, produced and starred in her own films Chance and Lovers, Liars & Lunatics...
appears as TaraTara MaclayTara Maclay is a fictional character created for the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson from the fourth to the sixth season until the character's death. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love...
in the dream sequences, as both Willow's girlfriend and a spirit guide to Buffy. Whedon commented on her appearances in Buffy's dream: "The idea that Tara would be her spirit guide made sense because she didn't have that particular relationship with Tara, and Tara has a kind of good Wiccan mystical energy." - George HertzbergGeorge HertzbergGeorge Hertzberg is an American actor best known for his portrayal of the cyber-demonic soldier Adam in the fourth season of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
appears as Adam, although in human form rather than in the demon/cyborg makeup he had appeared in throughout the season. - Mercedes McNabMercedes McNabMercedes Alicia McNab is a Canadian-born actress perhaps best known for playing Harmony Kendall on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel...
as Harmony KendallHarmony KendallHarmony Kendall is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel. The character is portrayed by Mercedes McNab...
is present during Willow's dream as both an ordinary classmate and a vampire. - Kristine SutherlandKristine SutherlandKristine Sutherland is an actress best known for her role as Buffy Summers' mother Joyce Summers on the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer.-Early life:...
appears as Joyce SummersJoyce SummersJoyce Summers is a fictional character in the fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Played by Kristine Sutherland, Joyce is the mother of the main character, Buffy Summers . Joyce appears regularly from the first episode until the character's death in the fifth season episode "The...
, Buffy's mother. Whedon enjoyed that she got "to play just completely sexy [in Xander's dream], because when you play the mom on a show you're sort of relegated to momhood, so it was nice to see that side of her."
It was during the filming of this episode that Michelle Trachtenberg
Michelle Trachtenberg
Michelle Christine Trachtenberg is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Dawn Summers in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and as Georgina Sparks in Gossip Girl...
, who would go onto play Buffy's sister Dawn
Dawn Summers
Dawn Summers is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and introduced by Marti Noxon and David Fury on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg. She made her debut in the premiere episode of the show's fifth season, and subsequently appeared in every...
in season five, first visited the set. Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Prinze , known professionally by her birth name of Sarah Michelle Gellar , is an American actress, singer and executive producer...
had worked with her previously and suggested to Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
that she read for the part of Dawn.
Music
In Giles' dream, actor Anthony Stewart Head sings "The Exposition Song"; this was the third time he sang during the season. The song was written by Joss Whedon, arranged by composer Christophe BeckChristophe Beck
Christophe Beck , also credited as Chris Beck, is a Canadian television and film score composer....
, and performed by Four Star Mary
Four Star Mary
Four Star Mary are an alternative rock group formed in California in 1997.Four Star Mary gained recognition after appearing in several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, providing the music for the fictional band Dingoes Ate My Baby, of whom the character Oz was the lead guitarist...
. Beck appears in the scene playing the piano, while members of Four Star Mary play the other instruments. Throughout the first four seasons of the series, Four Star Mary were the real band behind character Oz's fictional band, Dingoes Ate My Baby
Dingoes Ate My Baby
Dingoes Ate My Baby is a fictional rock band on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The name was derived from the widespread news coverage of the disappearance of 9 week old Azaria Chamberlain in Australia in 1980...
.
Analysis
Each dream acts as a character study, exploring the fears and future of the dreamer. Willow, Xander, and Giles are stalked by a shadowy figure, then killed within their dreams. The way in which each is killed is directly related to the role they had assumed when melding with Buffy in the previous episode—that role is indicated by the Tarot-like card used to symbolize the character's essence. Willow's card had been Spiritus, representing her magical powers; she is killed by having her spirit sucked out of her. Xander's card had been Animus, representing his heart; he is killed by having his heart ripped out. Giles had been represented by the card Sophus, a symbol of his intellect and role as teacher; he is killed by being scalped. Buffy's card, Manus, was representative of her physical strength. In her dream the stalker is revealed as the primitive, first slayer, who confronts her aggressively. The two fight, but the First Slayer is defeated when Buffy realizes a key difference between them: the First Slayer was alone and isolated, while Buffy is unique among Slayers in that she has friends and a life beyond slaying, factors which make her the greatest Slayer ever.In Willow's dream she struggles to find her place in the school theater production of Death of a Salesman, while her friends and classmates are apparently fully costumed, prepared, and ready to go on stage. Her confusion represents her lack of self-confidence, her fear that she still does not fit in or have a place in the world, unlike those around her, who are competent and know what is going on. She wears ordinary clothes, but the others repeatedly comment on the excellence of her "costume", a reference to her fear that her friends do not see what she has grown into, but rather what she was when younger: nerdy and awkward. This fear is confirmed when Buffy strips off her shirt and jeans, revealing the same unfashionable turtleneck and corduroy jumper she wore in episode one of the series, four years earlier, before her demon-fighting experiences and study of magic increased her confidence and competence. Willow stands anxiously at the front of the class, trying to read a paper, while her classmates express their boredom with listening to her and Oz whispers into Tara's ear, until she is attacked by the First Slayer and her breath is sucked out of her body.
Whedon stated that the maze of red curtains on the stage in Willow's dream are not a direct homage to Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
, as some have posited, but rather represent the safety and comfort of being with her girlfriend Tara, and are a sexual metaphor as well.
The main theme of Xander's dream is his sense of failure and of being left behind as his friends move ahead in life. His fear that he is stuck is reiterated throughout his dream by his inability to escape his basement bedroom in his parents' home. No matter where his dream takes him, he ends up back in the basement. As the only one of the Scoobies not in college, he feels anxiety about his ability to understand and keep up with ideas and conversations, a fear which is realized when he goes to the university, a place he already feels excluded from, and finds that he cannot understand what people say to him. Aware that he is being chased and is in danger, he asks Giles what is happening but cannot understand his answer, nor what Anya says to him, as they are both inexplicably speaking French. He exclaims, "I don't understand!" During his dream both Buffy and Willow tell him, "I'm way ahead of you," underscoring his fear that this is really the case.
Giles' dream presents a choice: either to remain a father figure and Watcher to Buffy, or to begin his own life, represented by the presence of his girlfriend Olivia, who pushes an empty baby stroller. During this part of his dream, Buffy is dressed as a child, with pigtails, and is unable to throw a ball straight without his help and instruction, an indication of his fear that she will be unable to do her job without his guidance. Later, Olivia is seen weeping, while the baby stroller has been overturned and abandoned, signifying elements of his unfulfilled life, such as marriage and children. Later, in The Bronze, he is explaining the reason they are all being stalked and attacked, performing his job as Watcher, but his singing this information represents his unfulfilled longing to be a musician, something he's been exploring privately throughout the season.
The major theme of Buffy's dream is her fear of the personal cost of her life as a Slayer, the isolation and loneliness she is forced to endure. This theme of aloneness is reiterated by several shots in which she is alone in the frame, most notably the wide shot of her in the vast and empty desert. Another source of anxiety is her relationship with her current boyfriend, Riley, whom she finds plotting world domination with Adam in his original, human, form. She fears what Riley could turn into as a result of his alliance with the military. She also fears the destabilizing effect of this alliance on their relationship, and the destabilizing effect of this relationship on her life as the slayer. She is shown putting mud on her face, mimicking the mud mask of the primal, First Slayer. By the end of her encounter in the desert with the First Slayer, Buffy realizes that she does not have to be entirely alone, that it is her closeness to friends and family that makes her a great Slayer, and once she experiences this revelation, the efforts of the First Slayer to continue to engage her in battle become fruitless and increasingly comical. The dream finally ends in a mundane way, as Buffy refuses to accept a tragic climax and instead insists on normality in her life.
All of the many elements in the dream sequences have meaning, with the exception of the Cheese Man. Whedon explains: "...the Cheese Man—meaningless. Why? Because I needed something in the show that was meaningless, because there is always something in the dream that doesn't make any sense at all. In this case it was the Cheese Man. He confounds everybody because of that, and people ascribe him meaning. This to me means that we're being successful, because this means they're not worried about everything else, which means they sort of did understand most other things."
Foreshadowing
Prior to "Restless" Whedon often used dreams and cryptic dialogue to foreshadow events, but in this episode foreshadowing becomes a major function of many of the images, conversations, and inferences. Buffy's dream references both the past and the future. In a dream sequence in the season three finaleGraduation Day (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
"Graduation Day" is the season finale of the WB Television Network's third season of the drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, consisting of the twenty-first and twenty-second episodes. They are also the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth episodes of the show overall...
, Faith says "Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0"; Buffy would die two years (730 days) later in "The Gift". This number appears (as 7:30) on a clock in Buffy's dream in "Restless". Buffy says, "It's so late." Tara replies, "Oh... that clock's completely wrong." A year has now passed, making the previous number of days to her death incorrect. When Buffy leaves the room, Tara tells her, "Be back before Dawn
Dawn Summers
Dawn Summers is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon and introduced by Marti Noxon and David Fury on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg. She made her debut in the premiere episode of the show's fifth season, and subsequently appeared in every...
." The character Dawn appears in the next episode. Tara's words to Buffy, "You think you know what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun." are repeated by Dracula to Buffy in the following episode ("Buffy vs. Dracula"). In Xander's dream, Giles and Spike swing together on a swing set, with Spike wearing a tweed
Tweed (cloth)
Tweed is a rough, unfinished woolen fabric, of a soft, open, flexible texture, resembling cheviot or homespun, but more closely woven. It is made in either plain or twill weave and may have a check or herringbone pattern...
jacket. Giles comments, "Spike's like a son to me." In "Tabula Rasa" (season six), when the characters lose their memories, Spike wears the same tweed jacket and believes Giles is his father.
Reception
The episode received critical praise and is often included on lists of the best episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
list of the 25 best Whedonverse episodes—including episodes from Buffy, as well as Angel
Angel (TV series)
Angel is an American television series, a spin-off of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series was created by Buffys creator, Joss Whedon, in collaboration with David Greenwalt, and first aired on October 5, 1999...
, Firefly
Firefly (TV series)
Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear....
and Dollhouse
Dollhouse (TV series)
Dollhouse is an American science fiction television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon under Mutant Enemy Productions. It premiered on February 13, 2009, on the Fox network and was officially cancelled on November 11, 2009. The final episode aired on January 29, 2010...
—"Restless" placed at #20, where they called it "Visually lush and trippy," and said, "...it reestablished that this genre show was really and truly a deeply affecting character drama with a delightfully bent sense of humor." At Syfy
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
.co.uk, the episode was listed as the seventh best episode in their list of the top 10 Buffy episodes, saying "This surreal episode marks the show's turning point, as it moved from a very well-executed urban fantasy drama series to something more creative, more thoughtful, and more surprising than pretty much anything else on television." In The Futon Critic's list of the 20 best episodes of 2000, the episode was placed at #1, with the author calling it an even more daring episode than "Hush", another acclaimed episode from the fourth season.
At Slayage.com
Buffy studies
Buffy Studies is a term applied to the collection of written works about, and the university courses that discuss aspects of, the television program Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, to a lesser extent, its spin-off program Angel. It explores issues related to gender and other philosophical issues as...
, the Online Journal of Buffy Studies, author Daniel Erenberg placed the episode as the second best of the series; stating that the episode "lends itself to infinite interpretations. No one watches it the same way. That's the mark of a true masterpiece." When Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
reviewed "Restless" in 2009, after beginning his first look at the series in 2008, he praised Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
's ability to represent what dreams are actually like. The A.V. Club also included "Restless" as an "essential episode" of the series in their list of the best TV series of the 2000s, in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer placed at #25. The episode was listed as #1 in Daily Kos
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
' list of the top 10 episodes of the series, and the episode was listed as the second best episode featuring dream sequences by USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
. In series creator Joss Whedon's own list of his favorite episodes, he includes "Restless", saying "Most people sort of shake their heads at it. It was different, but not pointless."
External links
- "Restless" at BuffyGuide.com