Buffy’s Best Episode Is A Preview Of Its Worst Season

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 22 seconds ago

When most Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans rewatch the show, they dread getting to Season 6 because it’s such a downer. Not only does Tara die, but this is the season where we watch Buffy have a downright toxic relationship with the vampire Spike and engage in other out-of-character behavior to deal with the stress of being brought back from the dead. Interestingly, though, this awful season is effectively foreshadowed by one of the show’s best and earliest episodes. We’re talking about the Buffy season 2 episode “When She Was Bad” which also involved the Slayer acting out of character due to immense stress.

Buffy fans had no way of knowing it when the episode first premiered, of course, but “When She Was Bad” previewed the show’s sixth season by making everyone (fans and characters alike) angry at the title character. For context, Buffy literally died at the Master’s hands in the Season 1 finale; however, Xander brought her back to life via CPR and she vanquished the vampiric villain. But in the Season 2 premiere, she is notably out of character: she snaps at Willow, she’s cruel to Cordelia, and she’s cool to Angel, going so far as to flirt with him to annoy her undead boyfriend.

If you’re a Buffy fan watching “When She Was Bad” for the first time, you likely spend much of the episode yelling at the TV and asking why the Slayer suddenly got so indifferent and mean over the summer. However, it turns out that all of this is a manifestation of Buffy’s trauma from her fight with the Master, and she returns to her old self after she smashes the vampire’s bones, effectively destroying any chances of him getting resurrected via dark magic. For the most part, this is a well-regarded episode, which is ironic because it foreshadows the core aspect of Season 6 that so many hated.

It’s easy to isolate individual elements of Season 6 that countless fans hated, including Buffy’s awful relationship with Spike (one that culminates in attempted rape). However, that relationship and so other bad decisions are driven by the fact that Buffy’s friends resurrected her after her Season 5 death; they reasoned that she could be stuck in a hell dimension, but Buffy later revealed that they accidentally yanked her out of heaven. This, combined with the trauma of Buffy’s mother dying in the previous season, ensured that the Slayer spent the season in a depressive state as she tackled mundane things like bills as well as undead monsters.

Given what we know about Buffy in Season 6, it’s fair to say that “When She Was Bad” foreshadows that later season by showing how she reacts to trauma by making bad decisions, especially romantic ones. In the earlier episode, this is perhaps best exemplified by her frequently rebuffing Angel and even leading Xander on with a sexy dance in order to make her vampire boy toy jealous. We don’t want to minimize Buffy’s previous trauma, but if getting killed and then immediately resurrected caused all this romantic drama, it’s perfectly believable that getting yoinked from heaven after months would lead to a toxic relationship with Spike.

Unfortunately, what the Buffy writers and producers failed to see is that “When She Was Bad” was effective specifically because it portrayed a one-episode arc in which the Slayer triumphed over her trauma by the time the credits rolled. It’s fine to have a single episode or arc where our hero is on the back foot, but as Season 6 shows, nobody really wanted an entire season of our title character getting brought low by her depressive trauma.

For better or for worse, though, this brought fans closer to Buffy because the sixth season is a trauma we shared together, although only the Slayer got to deal with her stress by having house-shattering sex with a hot vampire. In this way, you could say that all traumas are created equal…some are just more equal (and way more freaky) than others.