Ah, the last of the high school years. This is definitely the most mature season before
the shift towards college in Season Four, and I feel that it both thrives and
suffers due to that. If you ask me what
I think about this season, it tends to vary wildly depending on my mood. On the one hand, it has terrific standalones
and, on an episode-by-episode basis, some of the strongest in the series. However, the main arc leaves much to be
desired and comes off to me as kind of a letdown after the stellar arc from
Season Two.
First things first: the villains. Let’s face it, they were never going to top
the double header of Spike/Dru in the first half of Season Two, and Angelus in the
latter half. It was just never going to
happen. So they went a different route
entirely. The Mayor is this looming force
over the entire season (and even a bit in Season Two as well, almost certainly
in setup for what was to come) and rarely comes into contact with Buffy
himself. This makes him a much, MUCH
less personal villain than Angelus was, therefore Faith was needed to fill that
gap. She does a good job as being the
personal villain while doing it in a different way than Angelus did, and that’s
to the shows credit. Where the arc fails
is when it comes to showing Faith’s decline into evil. It has always felt sort of forced to me. After she kills the deputy in the alley
during Bad Girls, she kind of just switches to “Yep, I’m super evil now” mode,
and that always rang false to me, and this season gives little closure on
that. It is handled much better in
Season Four and Season One of Angel, but it’s a pretty dangly loose end for
this season to leave.
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The main characters get quite a bit to work with, luckily,
and even the secondary characters (both new and old) get good material. While I’ve never liked how everyone handled
Buffy’s leaving and return to Sunnydale, at least it gives her some emotional
baggage which doesn’t really get resolved until it comes out that Angel has
returned from Hell. The tryst between
Xander and Willow always felt very natural to me and luckily got Xander and
Cordy set on their path, as well as developed Oz more as a character. Giles gets to play around with being fired
from the council and also dealing with his betrayal to Buffy in Helpless. Of the main characters, only Cordy and Angel
feel misused, and this probably attributed a lot to them both migrating to
another show, where they both flourish more than they ever did on Buffy (Angel’s
stint as Angelus notwithstanding).
Whereas Season Two is literally full of highlights, I feel
like the best episodes of this season are much more defined. My top five for this season are: The Zeppo,
Dopplegangland, Amends, The Wish, and Earshot.
The Zeppo is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series, and the
remaining four (exempting maybe Earshot as just a great episode and not a near
perfect one) are definitely Top 20 material.
There aren’t a lot of below par episodes this season but I
feel like they clunk a lot harder than Season One or Two. They don’t have fun cheesiness to fall back
on and episodes like Dead Man’s Party, Beauty and the Beasts, Revelations,
Gingerbread, and Consequences don’t hold up as well as “bad” Season One and Two
episodes. I of course say this with the
caveat that there are no bad Buffy episodes, and even the worst episodes of the
series are better than most television.
Overall, Season Three is very good, but feels like a bit of
a disappointment after the emotional highs of Season Two. I’m certainly biased because the previous
season is my absolute favorite of the series, but removing that from the
equation, this is still one of the better seasons of the show objectively, it
just might not be one of my favorites.
If that makes sense.
****
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