Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Killed By Death - S02E18 Review

KILLED BY DEATH
SEASON 2 EPISODE 18

We open up with a sniffly Buffy hopping a wall and wandering through the graveyard on patrol before hearing a noise and striking. She narrowly avoids staking Xander, who has formed a slaying group with Willow and Cordy to pick up the slack since Buffy is sick. They scold Buffy for being out patrolling even though she has a pretty serious flu, but she insists she has to protect people from Angel. And then, right on cue, Angel shows up for a little tussle. Buffy gets pretty overpowered due to her lack of strength and is at Angel's mercy when the gang steps in. Cordy blinds him with a blanket while Xander wails on him, then they show him their crosses so he knows they mean business. I like when the Scooby Gang is actually competent at fighting.

Buffy, clearly winded by the whole event, collapses to the ground. So the gang rushes her to the ER and look how manly Xander is, carrying her in and whatnot. The doctors take her back but make the gang wait in the lobby until they can stabilize her. When Joyce and Giles arrive, the doc tells them that she's going to be fine but she needs to stay for a couple days to be on the safe side. Then they go to see her, and I really like loopy Buffy. "Shhh, hospital zone. No singing." But things aren't funny for long as she starts to freak out and even mentions vampires, which everyone passes off as delusions. Close save!

Xander mentions that he's never seen Buffy so freaked and Joyce explains that when Buffy was little she saw her cousin Celia die in a hospital and has been afraid of them ever since. I don't really mind this little backstory but it is literally never mentioned again, which is sort of weird. You'd think something like that would come up again at some point. Joyce and Giles have a little moment and she expresses her condolences regarding Jenny. Anthony Head's performance his is great; it's remarkably subtle in this episode, like he's trying not ready to deal with it yet. It's a good little moment, you don't get many Giles/Joyce scenes.

That night Buffy has a fever dream of a little boy watching her at her door, and as he walks away, a hideous old man demon walks by as well. It's actually a really good jump scare, one of the better ones on the show. Right here the demon looks really creepy. She groggily gets up and follows the boy and demon out into the abandoned red-tinted hallway, and she has a flashback back to the Celia incident that Joyce mentioned earlier. The actress playing young Buffy doesn't really look like Sarah Michelle Gellar at all. But then Buffy wakes up again. No kid or demon at her door, and it appears to have all been a dream. So she walks out into the fairly empty hallway again, and finds that one of the little kids in the children's ward died. She also hears two doctors arguing over an experimental procedure that is being performed on the kids, and even runs into a couple of the kids themselves. They say that death is after them and that adults can't see them.

Meanwhile Angel comes in with flowers, whistling Ode to Joy for some reason and Xander meets him with hostility. Angel tries to taunt him but Xander stands his ground, and his deathwish-ness actually gets Angel to back off. He doesn't leave without breaking Xander down a little bit by stating that the Xand man is still in love with her and how Angel got there first. Any scene involving Xander and Angel being jerks to each other is a successful one, I say. After some more Celia dreams, Buffy wakes up to her friends visiting her with gifts: Xander brings balloons, Willow does her homework for her, Giles brings grapes, and Cordy brings nothing, not surprisingly.

They go for a stroll, with Willow pushing Buff in a wheelchair, and Buffy tells the gang about how Dr. Backer is giving the kids experimental treatments and the little kid named Ryan saw death. Also Xander's jacket is pretty awesome, and Cordelia brings up a good point about how maybe Buffy WANTS there to be a monster so there's something for her to fight, though she could have phrased it better. Xander and Cordy break into the archives to find out how the little girl at the hospital died, but they are caught by the security guard. And Cordy uses what little charm she has to seduce him and allow Xander to grab the file and they hightail it out of there. And the guy that plays the security guard is actually really hilarious. Meanwhile at the library, Giles and Willow talk about how the monster could just be a regular person. I like this idea; it seems to imply that kids can see the true nature of people, and although this is never followed up on, it's a cool theory.

Buffy wanders into Ryan's room, where he's drawing the demon, and warns that he's going to come again. Meanwhile, Dr. Backer is diligently looking at some test tubes, has a eureka moment, and heads to the children's ward, where Buff is waiting for him. She sees him get sliced up, Freddy Kruger style by an invisible monster and dragged away, which is sort of funny looking. The next day she tells the gang about last night and shows them Ryan's picture. My favorite part is when Giles thinks that Buffy drew the really childish looking picture and she looks really offended. Joyce comes in ready to take Buffy home, but she fakes sick so she can stay the night and solve the demon problem.

Everybody splits up, Buffy and Willow go to check Backer's office, Xander stands guard for Angel, and Giles and Cordy go to research. Giles gets really whiny when he finds out that he gets paired up with Cordelia, and there's nothing better than petty Giles. And it's easy to see why she asks annoying questions about every single page in the demon books, but miraculously they do find the thing as its picture is actually on the front of the book they're reading. That's...convenient, to say the least. It's name is Der Kindestod, and it feeds by sucking the life out of little kids. Buffy then realizes it that it's the same thing that killed Celia when she was little, which is also a little convenient, really.

Buffy decides to make herself delirious again so she can see the demon to fight it, and takes Backer's experimental drug. She gets to the ward to find the kids all gone, having all started running from the monster into the basement. As she gets sicker she finally becomes able to see the monster and that it has followed the kids into the basement, so she goes after it. Security stops the two of them but Willow pretends she's covered in frogs so Buffy can get away. Xander runs into the Buffster and the two head down to find the kids and monster. The monster finds the kids and starts to do his life-sucking thing (which is does from his eyes; that's actually really cool and unique) but Buffy intercepts and fights it for awhile. I'm just now realizing that Supernatural's Season 1 episode Something Wicked really ripped this off big time, right down to the flashback from when the main characters were little. Anyway the thing starts to feed on Buffy then she breaks its neck. Kind of weak, but most neck snapping tends to be, I guess.

The next day, Buffy is playing the sick card to eleven having Joyce wait on her, and even Xander and Willow are taking advantage as they all watch cartoons. Xander is the messiest eater of all time, there's like half a bag's worth of chips on his shirt. Joyce then comes back in the room with a piece of mail for Buffy from the little boy Ryan. Inside it's a picture of Buffy standing in a pool of blood with Der Kindestod's neck gushing blood. Then it ends. No really, that's the ending.

Overall, this episode is pretty fun, but it definitely lacks a strong conclusion. Still, to be fair, it has a lot of character-building dialogue, and even reveals more about Buffy's childhood (even if it's never mentioned again). The Xander and Cordelia moments are really well-done and Giles very subtle grieving of Jenny is played perfectly. Not a perfect episode by any means, but still really solid.

***1/2