Perhaps even more nuanced was one of the most realistic depictions of death ever portrayed in a TV series. Ironically, in a series about a myriad supernatural threats, Joyce’s death came from a more mundane killer: a brain aneurysm. Written and directed by Joss Whedon shortly after the death of his own mother, “The Body” remains a towering achievement and a highlight of the season and the series.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I came in halfway through the fifth season. In that first meeting with Joss when he was talking about the season, he talked about how Joyce dies and he wanted to do a whole episode about the aftermath, called “The Body.” I’m, like, “Holy shit, Joyce dies?” I just loved that. Buffy, to me, is very emotional and also very funny. To take that risk of doing an episode where the main character’s mother dies, not from a vampire or anything supernatural, and do an entire episode with no score, that’s just really, really gut-wrenching. I go, “Man, this is definitely the place I want to be.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
Unlike “Once More, with Feeling,” “The Body” is an episode that uses no music at all in order to express a realistic portrayal of death. Throughout the fifth season, Buffy’s mother, Joyce, is in and out of the Sunnydale hospital, as she has a brain tumor. However, the viewer—along with the show’s characters—is led to believe that Joyce will live on, as her surgery is successful, and she is depicted as a cancer survivor for several episodes, before Buffy comes home one day to find her mother’s lifeless body on their couch.
While all the characters are shocked about the loss, Anya, the ex-vengeance demon, perhaps demonstrates the suddenness of Joyce’s death best: “But I don’t understand! I don’t understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she’s—there’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead . . . anymore! It’s stupid! It’s mortal and stupid!”
ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
“The Body” episode, in particular, is absolutely fascinating, dealing with the death of a family member. It wasn’t a situation where her mom, who died, came back the next episode through magic. It was finality—and it was handled in a very unique and emotional way. For all the horror, monsters, and vampires in the show, this was probably the most daring thing the show ever did.
DAVID FURY
That was fantastic. That was, again, one of those things where your jaw drops. Joss was very specific that every act was going to be one scene and there would be no music in it. And you’re going, “Really?” It’s such a heavy episode. And he said, it’s going to play more real without any score. So yeah, it was incredibly powerful and brilliant.
Joss was always looking for a different way to tell a Buffy story. With “Hush” without dialogue and now with “The Body” doing it without music. Keeping it almost like a stage play and pulling it off in a huge way. It’s a classic thing from Superman, which was with all my powers I couldn’t save my father. And very much the same with Buffy, you felt like, “I can always protect my mother from things that will kill her,” but the helplessness of not being able to save your loved one, your mother, despite all her powers—it’s a very powerful story.
SARAH LEMELMAN
While critics and fans alike believed that this episode would easily garner an Emmy nomination, it instead only received wide acclaim and was snubbed by the Emmy committee.
CHARISMA CARPENTER
(actress, Cordelia Chase)
I was just disappointed that it was never a Golden Globe winner or that it never got the Emmy, because I thought the themes were so important and I felt Joss and Marti and everyone who was involved on every level deserved it so much. I’m so grateful the makeup people were acknowledged, but it was so high level, in so many different departments. I think the title may have hurt the show in that regard, because you can’t take it that seriously. You can’t give an Oscar to Julia Roberts for Pretty Woman where she plays a hooker.
DAVID GREENWALT
Joss moved forward, and we moved forward every year, and the characters grew and changed. Then one year she gets this sister that no one has ever seen or heard of before. Her mother died in the episode “The Body,” which is probably one of the best episodes in television ever made. Joss made these ballsy choices and also shooting weird camera angles, just like an experience of grief with long shots of the dead body, shots out of focus and out of frame and no music. That was a wallop.
MICHELLE TRACHTENBERG
(actress, Dawn Summers)
Being a fan of the show from the very beginning and then being on it was very surreal for me. When I read the episode, it was like I was losing a part of myself, to be honest. I think it really allowed the audience to connect with Dawn for the first time. I wasn’t stealing things or whining.
DAVID GREENWALT
People talk about “Hush,” also incredibly brilliant, but this show was amazing. And now Joss’s own mother died—they had a country place in Upstate New York where as a kid there was no TV allowed. You could read, you could do stuff, but there was no chatter allowed during the day, either. She was a really well known feminist teacher. She was killed when he was twenty-eight driving back from school. So he made this show, “The Body,” and it was totally unflinching. You just kept looking at the body over and over again in this weird framing. And the balls to have no music to beg the audience to feel any goddamn thing one way or the other.
We were up in the editing room, and this is to illustrate the kind of relationship we had, Joss and I, and you know, a bunch of the other writers are in there and people are in tears at such an amazing episode, and I go, “God, Joss, what a great episode. It’s going to be so great when you show it to your mother. Oh, oops, nevermind.” He loved me for that. If I could make him fall out of his chair and spit his drink out, you know, that’s how we rolled with each other. He knew I adored him.
SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR
The big thing for me with the show was it was always so amazing to be a part of something that was constantly breaking the rules. We were constantly doing things that had never been done. We were constantly challenging both our audience and ourselves.
JOSS WHEDON
When I made “Hush,” part of it literally was, “You know, I’m kind of turning into a hack.” I felt like I was starting to phone it in and not challenging myself. So I thought, “OK, if I had a story I could only tell visually, that would be much harder.” The idea of not using music partially came from what I was trying to evoke, but also partially from me realizing, you know what, I have to take something away from myself. I have to bare myself the same way the actors have to.
DAVID FURY
He just would do things that were always spot-on. How did he think like that? I don’t know. Especially when you work in television, there eventually becomes what you think is a formula to what you’re doing. It’s always, like, this is where this is going to happen, and, of course, act four is the big fight scene. Act five is the coda scene. It’s all very specific and Joss tried to go, “What if you don’t have to do any of that? How can I turn this thing on its head.” That’s what makes him great.
Introduced in “The Wish”, Emma Caulfield, who played Anya, had many scene-stealing moments, perhaps none more memorable than her monologue about the nature of the death as this former vengeance demon ponders the nature of grief. “I don’t understand how this all happens,” she says. “How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then there’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore. It’s stupid. It’s mortal and stupid. And Xander’s crying and not talking, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why.”
EMMA CAULFIELD
(actress, Anya Jenkins)
I had a real Anya moment and I’m not proud of it. I was asked by a fan, “What were you thinking d
uring your monologue, because I cry every time.” I’m, like, “Honestly, I was really hungry and I had to go to the bathroom.” I was very, very lucky to have that monologue and to be a part of that episode, because it really was a beautifully done episode, from top to finish. Sarah’s performance, the writing, and the directing was really flawless and should have won an award.
DAVID FURY
The loss of the character of Joyce the mother is the child stepping into real adulthood. The idea of taking Joyce out of the picture was like the end of Buffy’s childhood. We had explored it through five seasons of high school, and with her mother dying and her father being out of the picture, you really feel alone for the first time in your life. You feel like I’m the adult now. It was a significant step, especially as we were preparing for Buffy’s death and the end of the season, that Buffy needs to make that transition into full-fledged adulthood.
Joyce’s death helped us get there. It came at a completely unexpected and arbitrary time, which is the way death usually comes. We played with her health before, so everyone just went, “Oh, well, that story is over. There’s nothing to be worried about anymore.” Then suddenly, for Buffy to come home and find her on the sofa dead was devastating, but it’s exactly where the character needed to be.
But despite the high-concept appearance of Dawn and later the sudden death of Joyce Summers, the season still needed a “Big Bad,” the recurring antagonist for the year, which was epitomized by Clare Kramer’s Glory.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
Glen or Glenda. It almost had that kind of thing with Glory where she’s really the male doctor. It was bizarre. It was weird. Then you throw in the knights from the old times who were trying to track her down. I thought it was an incredibly interesting idea.
DAVID FURY
Joss had a very clear idea about the whole buildup to the eventual reveal of the Ben-Glory connection and what that meant, which was another brilliant idea. The idea that Ben, who was this new potential love interest, was also our villain [and that] this goddess Glory and they were one in the same was a neat idea. That was transgenderism at its peak. It was a really interesting way to go and we did have lots of discussions about gender identity during that.
CLARE KRAMER
(actress, Glory)
What happened was when I went in to audition for the role, they just had two pages of dialogue, no character description. They didn’t indicate that she was going to be bad, even. Or if it was just for one episode. I decided to play her a certain way—the Glory way—and as they went with my story line, they would decide things two or three weeks ahead. So I didn’t even know she was going to be the Big Bad until after a couple of episodes in. I certainly didn’t know she was going to be a god.
DAVID FURY
Clare Kramer was great as Glory. She relished the part. She was beautiful and she played the evil quite well. It was fun to play this character that all of these people were suddenly coming under the thrall of her, which I introduced. I really got to introduce Dawn in the second episode of the season and that was when she went to the homeless man who is babbling about Glory. I thought it was very interesting.
CLARE KRAMER
I definitely wanted people to like my character, but I remember after my first episode aired I went on one of the message boards to see what everyone’s reaction was. Some people hated my character and some people liked my character, but more people didn’t at that point, because they were, like, “Who is this person trying to fight Buffy? What’s going on here?” So I thought to myself, as an actor, I really need to not read that people don’t like me, otherwise I’m going to try and change my performance and change myself to make me this or that. I knew I had to just trust Joss and the show to deliver the kind of character the audience would want. And so from that day on, I didn’t worry about it anymore.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I remember my first real day of being hired to do the show. We all piled into a Winnebago and went to Santa Clarita, because Marti [Noxon] was directing an episode there. We were talking about Glory. Then there was a lot of talk through the season about: What does Glory want? What’s the plan? She wants the Key, but the problem with wanting Dawn as the Key is that basically her evil plan is to go home, which isn’t really that horrible. We struggled with that.
CLARE KRAMER
I don’t think she was evil at all. She just wanted to go home, and she was just trying to achieve what would get her there. It’s not her fault that the monks hid the Key in Dawn, but I also think as the actress, when you approach the character, you can’t approach it like, “Oh, she’s evil. I’m going to play an evil character.” You have to approach it like any role where you don’t pinpoint the good or the bad; you just look at the dynamics of that person. Even though she was a god, she was still a person, and it had to be approached that way. So I never saw her as evil; I knew she was the Big Bad, obviously, and she served a purpose on the show and for the season.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I came up with the idea that when she opens the dimension to go back to her hell dimension, all the dimensions open up and basically bled into Earth. That’s where you get the dragons and the monsters that basically destroy the planet. First, I pitched it to David Fury and everybody and they go, “Yeah, you should pitch that to Joss.” I remember pitching that to Joss and he goes, “Yeah, yeah. That’s a good idea.” Then I pitched him another idea that he hated. I got one win that night and one, “No, that’s stupid.”
MARTI NOXON
I felt like the season was revitalized; there was a lot of energy and we were back where we had Buffy in a really interesting place emotionally. That’s always easier to write. The stuff with her mother and Dawn gave really clear emotional stuff for her to play. That gave us a really good, rich season. We started to feel a real updraft; that the show was moving in a positive direction.
Not that we’d felt we had a crappy season, but season four was transitional in a lot of ways. Season five felt like we were into a groove and a lot of the episodes turned out great. It was wonderful to be on a show heading for a hundred episodes and not feeling done—feeling like there was still a lot of life in the show and stories we wanted to tell. Stuff happening to Buffy that year opened up a whole bunch of new possibilities for her. All of that made us feel like we were going into the sixth season with a lot on our plate.
In “Restless,” the First Slayer had prophesized to Buffy that “death is your gift.” In the fifth season finale, “The Gift,” Buffy learned what that actually meant when she sacrificed her life to save Dawn and the earth. And if there was any doubt that this time Buffy’s death was for real, the final episode to air on the WB ends with a shot of Buffy’s gravestone: “She saved the world . . . a lot.”
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
That’s the whole challenge of acting; to build an imaginary world in your head that you can release into and play in and seems real. I think Sean Penn calls it “the cage.” Meryl Streep calls it “the playpen” or something, I call it “the sandbox.” If you build that world in a detailed way, it’s kind of like playing house as a kid. You know, if you have a cardboard box it’s pretty good. But if you go to a friend’s house and they have an actual little house with a skillet with plastic sausages and stuff, and it’s more detailed, you can play better. So, you know, acting is about providing yourself with all those details.
When you’re in a TV series, you have a long time to build that world. And believe me, in my head there’s a little tiny Sunnydale with a very tiny Buffy and very tiny Spike. And little tiny Spike loves little tiny Buffy, and that’s all real. And so you just escape into that. So yeah! She was really dead, man. She was dead; she was not coming back; and I was very sad. For real.
DAVID FURY
This was it; this was the end. There was a lot of discussion about how we were going to end this up. Despite the fact that most of us were skeptical that the show could end given its popularity, I thi
nk we were still locked into this idea that Buffy will die and this may be the end of the series at that time. We had to build it right and get to the eventual climax the best way we could. If the show did not continue, I have to say it would have been a big bummer. But I don’t think we were really convinced Buffy would not continue, even if the WB was threatening to cancel us.
JAMES MARSTERS
The biggest challenge was how do we all truly believe she’s dead? How do we sell this seriously? She’s dead. I think it’s only cheesy if you hold back. The answer to that challenge is if we believe it ourselves, the audience can get caught up in that moment and believe it, if only for the time they’re watching the episode; they can believe it, too. Then, you know, they turn off the television and say, “Wait a minute! Is this show canceled? No, it’s not canceled; she’s coming back.” But while they’re watching it, they get fooled by the commitment of the performance.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
The death of Buffy, that’s tricky. When you hear Buffy sacrifices herself, of course, the first reaction is, “That’s bullshit. They’re bringing her back.” It’s tough to pull that off and make it feel real. Although the tombstone seemed to have done a major job of doing that, didn’t it? It was epic . . . and weird . . . and bizarre. I think it ended in a really interesting place where Buffy sacrifices herself . . . which led into season six.
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