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When She Was Bad
5V01


After spending the summer with her dad in L.A., Buffy returns to Sunnydale, well, very unsunny. It seems her prom night massacre of the Master -- during which she died and came back to life -- gave her more of a wiggins than she admitted at the time. And to make matters worse, the Master is not quite as dead as everyone had hoped. His minions assemble with the Anointed One and plan to try to bring the Master back. This can be done by assembling those who were with him when he died -- Willow, Cordelia, Giles, and Ms. Calendar, the computer teacher who Giles is stuck on. Angel warns Buffy about the Anointed One's powers, but she ignores him. Besides being rude to Angel and nasty to Cordelia, she is cold to Willow and Xander. She even tries to make Angel jealous by dancing seductively with poor Xander, who buys her act. Xander finally tells Buffy off when the vampires beat him up and start assembling the foursome they need for their mission. Buffy rescues Willow, Cordelia, Giles and Ms. Calendar, who are hung upside down and about to be killed. In order to finish off the Master, Buffy crushes his bones.

After this final act, Buffy is purged of her fear and anger and starts sobbing as Angel holds her. The next day at school, she apologizes to Giles for behaving so badly, and is mortified when she realizes how rotten she's been to her friends. But once she gets to class, Xander and Willow are quick to forgive her, and the Three Musketeers -- or is it the Three Stooges? -- are together again.

More Information

Following the Summer break, and her dramatic encounter with The Master, Buffy returns to Sunnydale. Likewise, the show returned to American screens, looking revitalised and exhibiting a new-found confidence. 'When She Was Bad' is another excellent episode written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon. It begins by showing that the events at the end of the last series had long-lasting consequences (see Prophecy Girl). This is a style that's becoming increasingly rare in television drama, which normally tends to live in the moment and assumes that viewers are too fickle to follow plot threads across more than one episode.

The episode does a good job tying up the loose ends left at the end of the first series and toys with the viewer's expectations that The Master might not really be dead. In fact, it's Buffy that might not really be alive or, at least, not fully recovered. Before long, though, it becomes obvious that she's back to fighting fitness, and by the end of the episode, Buffy has exorcised her remaining demons. Sarah Michelle Gellar handles the changing moods of her character very skilfully, bringing added depth to confrontational scenes with Cordelia, Angel and Xander.

Cordelia is finally integrated into Buffy's club of confidantes during "When She Was Bad". This changes the dynamic relationship between the lead characters - keeping the show fresh and giving the talented Charisma Carpenter new nuances to work with.

Trivia

Being the first episode of the second series, 'When She Was Bad' features a revamped title sequence, with added credit for David Boreanaz (Angel). Since the second season was shot six months after filming wrapped on the first, several cast members have different hairstyles. (In Sunnydale at least several weeks have passed since the events in Prophecy Girl so it makes sense that there would be differences).

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