Summary

• The narrative of "The Body" strips away the series' supernatural trappings.
• Joyce's death results in development for the entire cast.
• The cinematography and sound design of "The Body" are different from any other episodes.

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, there is a select group of episodes that all fans agree rank among the best. These episodes include "Once More with Feeling," "Hush," "The Gift," "Becoming Parts 1 and 2," and "Passion." However, whether or not it's their favorite, there's one episode almost everyone will agree is superior to all others.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5's "The Body" has never lost its reputation as the best episode of the series. Its unusual nature, powerful performances and character development, and universally painful themes make it so much more than just another episode of television.

The Body Strips Away the Series' Fantastical Trappings

• Apart from a single vampire attack, "The Body" contains no fantastical elements.
• By removing all supernatural elements, "The Body" is free to focus entirely on its characters and themes.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a supernatural drama that uses the various monsters and creatures Buffy fights to parallel struggles in her personal life. The majority of "The Body" doesn't follow this format. Instead, picking up from the shocking ending of the previous episode, "I Was Made to Love You," "The Body" focuses exclusively on Buffy, Dawn, and their friends' reactions to the out of nowhere death of Buffy and Dawn's mother, Joyce Summers.

Fans of the series love almost everything about it, but the main draw was never the vampire, the battles to save the world, or the deep and complex lore. All of these things contribute to making Buffy the Vampire Slayer the iconic piece of pop culture that it is, but it's the characters that fans love most of all. Not only are all the layers except for the characters peeled away in "The Body," but even the unrealistic, overly witty way they're all known to speak is replaced with much more natural dialogue. In doing this, and by forcing them to face a realistic tragedy, the episode gets to the core of who its characters are and explores different reactions to the unexpected death of a loved one. The emotions the characters display are raw, and with each of their actors giving some of their best performances in the series and no comic relief present, "The Body" is one of the saddest episodes of television ever made.

After spending the bulk of its runtime as a pure drama, a vampire attack occurs in the final act of "The Body." Some fans critique this decision, believing it to go against what the episode was going for and only existing to get Dawn into a position to see Joyce's body, but its inclusion is more deliberate than that. The events of this episode are more realistic to viewers, but to Buffy, this isn't how her world operates. This lone supernatural occurrence represents how, even in the face of great loss, the world continues to spin. Buffy cannot just lie down and cry because she still has a job to do.

Joyce's Death Incites Character Development for the Main Cast

• Buffy, Dawn, and their relationship are changed forever by the death of their mother.
• In their grief, Willow and Tara share their first on-screen kiss.

While never a main character, Joyce Summers was a fixture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's first five seasons. Initially presented as Buffy's overprotective and nagging mother, viewers and the other characters get to know her better and grow to love her. In Season Five, one of the subplots is about Joyce being diagnosed with a brain tumor, Buffy doing everything she can for her, and the Scoobies rallying around Buffy. When Joyce dies from an aneurysm after having her brain tumor successfully removed and putting the other characters into a false sense of security, it's a gut punch for the entire cast.

At the heart of "The Body" are, naturally, Joyce's daughters, Buffy and Dawn. For Buffy, the Slayer, the older sister and the one who finds Joyce's dead body, Buffy struggles with not only the intense grief of losing a mother but also the trauma of how she learned of her death, her confusion of how this is possible in the face of all the world-ending threats she's stopped, and the new responsibilities ahead of her when it comes to taking care of Dawn. While Buffy has to process the emotions of losing a parent as an adult, Dawn gives the perspective of losing a parent as a child. She lashes out, she's hysterical, and she isn't fair to Buffy, her new guardian, because that's how kids process trauma. Only at the end of the episode, when Buffy saves Dawn from a vampire and the two look at Joyce's body, are they able to come together and find the strength to keep moving forward.

Outside of Buffy and Dawn, the standouts of "The Body" are Anya, Willow, and Tara. Anya is over 1,100 years old and has spent the bulk of that time as a vengeance demon, only recently becoming human. Despite having spent a millennium spreading death and destruction, Joyce's death destroys her because of how sudden it comes, how surreal the nature of death is as an outsider to it, and how it acts as a reminder of her newfound mortality. For many fans, her speech to Xander is the absolute highlight of the episode. For others, that honor goes to the scene in which Willow and Tara are preparing to go see Buffy. Neither woman has had a strong relationship with their own mother. Joyce was important to them both, and they're both extremely empathetic toward Buffy's feelings as well. For Willow, her feelings manifest in the form of freaking out over what shirt to wear, leading to her and Tara sharing their first on-screen kiss. It's not only an emotionally powerful scene but a historically important one, as this was the first ever kiss between two lesbian main characters on television.

The Body is Directed and Presented Differently from Every Other Episode

• "The Body" is shot cinematically and doesn't include any incidental music.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, and Emma Caulfield deliver some of their best performances in the series.

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer has experimental episodes like "Once More with Feeling" and "Restless," the vast majority of the series features uniform cinematography, sound design, and pacing. From the moment it starts, "The Body" feels significantly darker and heavier than any other episode, as if it's from another show entirely.

"The Body" is shot differently from the rest of the series. The standard camera angles are implemented in places but primarily rely on continuous, lingering shots with the camera pulled back. Every shot lasts just a little too long for comfort to create a feeling of unease. Just as there is none of the show's typical qupping in the episode, the rapid back-and-forth camera angles usually seen are absent. This gives the body a more cinematic feeling while also adding to the sense of realism of the events taking place and preventing the audience from any escape from what these characters are suffering.

Also contributing to these goals is the total lack of incidental music in the episode. There is no dramatic score to tell the audience how to feel, be it during devastating scenes like the opening where Buffy finds Joyce's corpse or heartfelt ones like Willow and Tara's kiss. All the emotional weight is carried by the actors, with each of them turning in an unforgettable performance. Sarah Michelle Gellar, in particular, delivers her best-ever performance as Buffy, perfectly capturing the whirlwind of emotions she's experiencing. Anya's heartbreaking speech wouldn't be what it is without Emma Caulfield putting her soul into it. Alyson Hannigan's breakdown is equally brilliant, and she and Amber Benson make their historic kiss as potent a moment as it deserves to be. Not a single cast member falls short, including Nicholas Brendon, James Marsters, and Anthony Stewart Head, who make the most of their relatively limited focus. Being almost universally regarded as the best episode of one of the most popular TV shows of all time is no small achievement, but it's one "The Body" has had since its initial airing in 2001. It may punch viewers in the gut and be difficult to sit through for anyone who's ever lost a loved one, but it's undoubtedly still Buffy the Vampire Slayer's greatest triumph.