Buffy The Vampire Slayer is probably my second favorite TV show of all time (after Lost) and "The Body" is definitely one of the top three episodes. I watched it last night as I'm re-watching Buffy, and was blown away by it all over again. It is such an emotional episode, that I can't help but cry during it. What is remarkable to me about this episode is that it portrays death as very real and physical. Buffy finds her mom's body and the episode takes us through what the moments when you discover someone is dead are like, as well as the moments after. There is no music and the camera mostly follows Buffy in just one shot as she slowly realizes that her Mom is dead.
I haven't personally experienced a death of this magnitude, but I imagine that the experience shown in the episode is about as realistic as it gets. Most other shows would dramatize a death by adding emotional music and giving the death some kind of profound meaning. Here there is no meaning. It is just what it is. And that realism is what makes it such a profound view of what death really is like. Each character in the show deals with the death in a different way, much like in real life. The emphasis is placed on the sometimes too realistic physicality of the body itself--multiple shots are shown of the mother's body that are not particularly attractive, but that is how it is in real life.
Perhaps my favorite part of the whole episode is a speech the character Anya gives. It is hard to understand the poignancy of her words without knowing the character. Anya used to be a demon, and is just now learning what it is like to be human, so her experience is like that of a child. She can oftentimes be blunt about things, almost sounding insensitive, but it is simply her childlike nature and not understanding how to be tactful or even why one needs to be tactful. So, her innocent view of the death of Buffy's mom is quite profound to me and makes me tear up everytime I hear it. Here are the words she says:
"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 can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal
and stupid, and, and Xander 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."
The beauty of this quote is lost through just the writing of it because it is all about the actress' delivery. It is such an incredible moment, and this episode is indeed one of the best episodes in all of television.
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