"I mean, I'll miss stuff, but graduating just isn't that big of a deal to me. You get a piece of paper and nothing changes"--Buffy Summers, "Graduation Day."Graduation episodes were staples of TheWB, and they remain staples on The CW. Show runners continually return to graduation episodes throughout the years because of what graduation represents--change, a sense of accomplishment and moving on. The episodes are as much rite-of-passage as episodes about the prom. However, in the majority of melodramatic teenage shows, nothing happens during a single season, then the graduation episodes supposed to show how much progress and change the high school seniors experienced. Naturally, I'm thinking of the fourth season of Dawson's Creek but other teen dramas have covered their laziness with the graduation episode.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Graduation Day" is the complete opposite of the typical WB/CW graduation episode. For one thing, there's flaming arrows. And Joss Whedon knows how to tell a story and complete a meaningful arc. The Buffy quote above conveys the girl's feelings as graduation looms but things will change and the characters will move on. Joss, really, has been building toward graduation day since season one of the series. The first three seasons of Buffy are about the horror of high school. When Oz remarks that the group survived, he means high school. The battle wasn't nearly as difficult as every day existence in the halls of Sunnydale High. The characters have grown and changed in incredible ways during the first three seasons of the series, so Joss truly earned an episode that represents change, accomplishment and moving on.
Willow, as a sophomore, had all the confidence of a wall-flower. She was bullied because of her wardrobe, in love with her best friend and unable to muster the courage to be honest with Xander about how she felt. Slowly, she became more comfortable and confident in her skin. She dabbled in the Wiccan arts and met Oz. With Oz, she actualized her potential as a person. In "Graduation Day," she experiences the most significant change in her life when she loses her virginity to Oz.
Xander had little confidence and self-esteem in the first season. He longed for Buffy and watched as she fell in love with a vampire. Like Willow, he was an outsider in Sunnydale High. When he began dating Cordelia, he quickly lost her because of peer pressure. The Cordettes mocked their former leader for dating the likes of Xander Harris--his middle-class upbringing and broken home made him less than desirable to the popular crowd. His winning charm and wit, though, kept Cordelia by his side. The incident in "Halloween" injected confidence and a sense of leadership that never left him. Xander leads his former classmates in their fight against the mayor at commencement. He unified the disparate class in one final act of solidarity against the evil in Sunnydale.
The class of 1999 honored Buffy at the senior prom with a class protector award in a moment that showed how much Buffy affected Sunnydale High in two short years. She's more than capable of continuing her life as a slayer without the watcher's council, which is what she does when Wesley informs of the council's refusal to save Angel's life. Buffy out-grew the council and the need for guidance. The scene's representative of how much Buffy's changed--the transformation from the scared 16 year old girl in "Prophecy Girl" to the confident girl near womanhood in "Graduation Day" is completed, and it's as powerful as any moment in the series. The girl's overcome personal strife and Big Bads. She refused to feel victimized or humiliated by Angelus. She killed her boyfriend to save the world. She died to beat The Master. She offered her blood to save Angel, and she feared no snake as he chased her through the halls of Sunnydale.
And she hatched the plan to kill the mayor by blowing up the school. "There is a certain dramatic irony that's attached to all this. A synchronicity that borders on predestination, one might say," Giles declares post-explosion. High school couldn't have ended without the destruction of Sunnydale High. Giles' line says it all. Giles, too, experienced great change while the librarian at Sunnydale and as Buffy's watcher. Their relationship began as typical "master and student" and gradually evolved into "father and daughter." Giles has a father's love for the girl. He'll always support her and he recognizes that she's strong enough to be independent in her post-high school and post-watcher life.
Is "Graduation Day" a classic episode of TV? I think so but people may argue amongst themselves about whether the episode deserves the 'classic' classification. I just wanted to write about the episode so I attached an arbitrary title to the post. "Graduation Day" is full of memorable moments separate from the completion of the various personal arcs. The Buffy-Faith fight's among the best fights in the Whedonverse; any scene with Anya and Xander's gold; Wesley and Cordelia's kiss has more laughs than the last six seasons of Entourage (the scene showcases Alexis Denisof's comedic abilities); Angel feeding on Buffy pays off nearly a season's worth of sexual tension; Oz proposes that the Scoobies attack the mayor with hummus.
The episode's worth writing about because it's a near perfect 88 minutes of TV. Joss packed in all the excitement of a season finale with the trademark emotion and sentiment that fans adore Buffy for. He paid off three seasons of high school angst and he completed the best arc in the series in a masterful way. He wrote Angel out of the show without resorting to cliché tropes. Each character, including the secondary ones like Harmony, Larry and Jonathan, had their great moment. The series changed following the third season, so it's hard to not view the finale as a fond farewell to a great era in the show's history.
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