Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Prom

"Mighty fine shindig."

- Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

Today's selection: "The Prom," the penultimate story of the third season of

Buffy fans know that season 3 ends with the (awesome) two-parter "Graduation Day." If you were watching the show back when it was on the air, you might remember that there was a two-month gap between pts. 1 and 2. The WB Network felt uncomfortable airing the 2nd part (which features apocalyptic high school destruction and students handling firearms in school) so soon after the Columbine school shooting. 

I remember the controversy (summer of '99, though I only came to Buffy years later via DVD) and Seth Green and Sarah Michelle Geller speaking out against the WB's decision. At the time, it was a question of whether such things would inspire copycat massacres. It's a little uncomfortable reflecting on this in 2015, having seen so many more of these awful school shootings. I suspect the same thing I suspected in 1999, that whatever decisions you make with things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer neither deter nor inspire horrific crimes. But it's worth noting that the idea of a Columbine-level school shooting was so horrific and unprecedented in 1999 that a decision like this was made in the first place.

Too bad the real world doesn't have a Buffy looking out for it. But that's why we create Buffies and Batmen in the first place.

Anyway, let's not be grim - we're here to praise! "The Prom" is both prom-tv-tastic and Buffy-TV-tastic, for lack of a less-dumb-sounding term. Buffy fans all have their own favorite eras; mine is about mid-season-two through mid-season-four, so "The Prom" is right in the sweet spot for me.

In case your life has yet to be illuminated by the show, the set-up for Buffy the Vampire Slayer is pretty much summed up in the title. She's the Slayer, the latest in a line of young women endowed with superhuman strength and agility who are called on by fate to protect humanity against the hordes of vampires, demons, and other undead that spew forth from the hellmouth under Sunnydale High. Aiding her in this quest are her on-again, off-again vampire soul mate Angel (David Boreanaz), her best friend Willow, popular gal Cordelia -

wisecracking sidekick Xander (Nicholas Brendon), part-time werewolf Oz (Seth Green), and librarian/ Watcher Giles. 

Played by Anthony Stewart Head.

Buffy was two parts Claremont's X-Men and one part Dungeons and Dragons. Or maybe the other away around. Maybe a little Heathers, too. However you slice it, it was and is fantastic TV. To say it changed the face of television might be an overstatement (though the internet's favorite TV critic seems to think it did), but it's definitely cast a long shadow. Like each of Joss Whedon's shows, it inspired its own passionate (and ongoing) fan-base. The Buffyverse continues in comics (primarily) to this day. 

As for 

the episode begins with Buffy and Angel in bed. (Just cuddling, of course; having sex with Buffy turns Angel into a monster.) Buffy talks about maybe bringing some of her things over to his place so she can stay the night more often. She also mentions the upcoming prom, which he, being 243 years old, "doesn't exactly get." 

When Buffy's Mom visits to remind him that whatever else she is, she's still just a teenage girl - this sounds creepier than it actually is in the episode - Angel's ambivalence increases.

Ultimately resulting in this dream sequence:

The dream is the final straw. After arguing on their next patrol, Angel breaks up with her, telling her she deserves to have all those things in life he can't give her. Buffy, naturally, is devastated.

The Angel/Buffy relationship was a defining characteristic of the show, but with Angel spinning off into its own show, they had to do something about it. Choosing this pre-Ascension prom episode as the one to cut the cord was definitely the right move. 

Giles is sympathetic, to a point.

Never mind the ascension for now; it's outside our TV Prom theme. But there is a supernatural threat, which is brought to everyone's attention when Xander and Cordelia are attacked by some manner of hell-beast at April Fool's, the clothes store where Cordy works. 

Charisma Carpenter jumped ship for Angel as well after Season 3.

As did Alexis Denisof (Wesley, the Watcher who joined the cast specifically for the ascension.)

There's some nice character-arc-wrap-up stuff between Xander and Cordelia. Cordy is working at the store because she has to in order to pay for her prom dress; she's been in the poor house since her father got busted for tax fraud. ("Now you can run along and tell your friends that Cordy finally got hers. And how she has to wear a nametag. I'm a name-tag person. Don't leave that out.") Cordy and Xander used to have a thing but it ended badly (long story), but Xander tries to make up for things by anonymously paying for her dress.

Wesley approves. (He and Cordy had a bit of a will-they-or-won't-they, as well.)

Anyway, the hell-beast who tore apart April Fool's turns out to be more specifically a hell-hound. When the Scooby Gang studies the store-video of the attack, Oz recognizes the guy standing around outside as one Tucker Wells, with whom Oz shared a chemistrylab. ("Let me guess. He was quiet, kept to himself but always seemed like such a nice young man.") They then discover a voicemail Tucker left for another friend - "Those Sunnydale High lemmings have no idea what awaits them. Their big night will be their last night!"

Tucker, it turns out, has plans to ruin prom night by sending a hell-hound trained to attack those in formal wear to the dance.

"So... that's how you brainwashed the hounds to go psycho on prom?"

Buffy is determined not to let Tucker Wells ruin her friends's prom, nor hers, which she resolves to attend despite the whole break-up with Angel.

Buffy tracks Tucker down (running into Angel at the butcher's where Tucker got his cow brains to feed the hell-hounds, and where Angel gets his cow's plasma) and easily subdues him. ("Luckily for me, you're an incompetent maladjust.") She doesn't care to learn his reasons for why he instigated this hell-hound plan, but we-the-audience are treated to this hilariously quick flashback:

And that's all it took.

Turns out it's hellhounds, plural, but Buffy easily enough subdues those, as well.

This screencap also-known-as Reason Number 43 My Wife Won't Watch Buffy.

Threat dispatched, let's have a look at the prom sequence, which is the real heart of the episode.

Anya (a vengeance demon, played by Emma Caulfield) and Xander become an item in Season 4. This is a nice precursor to that.

Oz and Willow enjoy themselves. (Also a nice precursor to Season 4.)

And as for Buffy...

After she arrives and tells everyone the problem's taken care of, she's surprised to hear her name called out from the stage by the head of the prom committee (recurring Buffy foil Jonathan Levinson), who delivers the following speech:

"We're not good friends. Most of us never found the time to get to know you. But that doesn't mean we haven't noticed you. We don't talk about it much, but it's not secret that Sunnydale High isn't really like other high schools. A lot of weird stuff happens here."

(From the crowd: "Zombies!" "Hyena people!" "Snyder!")

"But whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to show up and stop it. Most of the people here have been saved by you, or helped by you, at one time or another. We're proud to say that the class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history. And we know at least part of that is because of you. So the senior class offers its thanks and gives you this:

"It's from all of us, and it has written here: "Buffy Summers: Class Protector."

Noel Murray considered 'The Prom' a "nice, low-stakes palate-cleanser before the coming apocalypse. In some ways it’s the most 'high school-y' episode of the series, because more than anything, it’s an adolescent fantasy come to life. What sullen high school student hasn’t dreamed of the day when his or her classmates would finally appreciate them?" 

Exactly. It's a fantastic intersection of series mythos and adolescent wish fulfillment. 

This episode is recalled memorably in the Season 4 episode "Superstar." Man! Let's all do a Buffy re-watch, for real. 

Songs: "Wild Horses" by The Sundays and "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim. (Some fine prom music, there.)

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Friends - The One with the Prom Video

"Though promoted as sitcoms, (Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and Friends) were really commercials designed to promote the city as the rightful home of the elite. With the threat of class war vanquished and industry exported overseas, (the city was determined) to be the most effective device for inculcating the population with 'the Joneses' - the desire to live up to the standard set by the fashion, beauty, and luxury industries."

I'll circle back to the quote above (from "Seinfeld Syndrome" in The Psychic Soviet by Ian Svenonius) in a bit. When I asked for suggestions for this TV Proms series, a few people nominated this, "The One with the Prom Video", often voted the best Friends episode of them all.

It may certainly be that, but only the very end ventures anywhere near the focus of this series. And it's all just window dressing for the real story, i.e. Ross and Rachel's getting together. Very effective window dressing and all, but yeah, not much in the way of a "TV Prom" episode.

I trust you know the whole Friends set-up, so I'll dispense with any overview of the show. This was the 14th episode of the 2nd season, so as things stand after the opening credits end: 1) Ross loves Rachel, but she keeps discouraging him, 2) Chandler and Monica are not together, and 3) Joey and Chandler live together.

That forms one of the ep's most enduring subplots: the bracelet buddies.

Joey gives Chandler a friendship bracelet, which he wears reluctantly. When a woman at Central Perk abandons her attempt to pick him up upon noticing it, Chandler goes on a tirade and is overheard by Joey.

At times Friends's humor was a little broad for me. I watched it regularly enough in some capacity, never a diehard fan, but like a lot of people in America in the 90s, it was just part of the background. Later, I had some friends who were diehards, and I was able to appreciate the show through their eyes a bit more. Anyway, aspects of this bracelet buddies b-plot were like that for me, especially with Chandler's attempts to apologize. 

Case in point: the "I am kneeling before you, holding two pillows, much as they did in biblical times" joke.

If this was Cheers (incidentally, this episode's director's alma mater) I probably wouldn't think twice about it. But here it seems a tad over-precious to me. As does everything Phoebe says, from "I'm ready for my penis now" - sounds a little edgy out of context, I know - to "See? He's her lobster" at episode's end.

All of which is to say, Friends is a fine enough show and all, but it never deeply resonated with me.

People who hang these Moulin Rouge or old-liquor posters on the wall, too - ugh. It's announcing to the world you have no original taste. I realize this isn't the best showcase of it, but you know what I mean.

Not being particularly vested in the characters, therefore, the whole Ross and Rachel dynamic is of only historical interest to me. They were no Sam and Diane. But they're a good generational marker. Depending on when you were born, no one would fault you for saying "Sam and Diane are okay, but they're no Ross and Rachel." You'd be very wrong, but hey, plenty of room in the pool.

This is a great episode for them, though.

Let's get to the prom video. When Ross and Monica's parents bring over a bag of Monica's old things, they find a VHS tape inside that was recorded the night of the prom. Ross doesn't want to watch it, for reasons soon to be apparent, but everyone else overrides him.

The main gag of the video is how the characters looked. Ross with his 'stache and perm:

"Lookin' good, Mister Kot-ter!"

and a pre-nose-job Rachel and fat Monica.

I hate fat suit humor. Why and how this sort of thing is not roundly condemned in the hyper-sensitive Offense Bowl of 2015 is beyond me. The nose job joke works because Jennifer Aniston is poking fun at her real-life self. Courtney Cox - who later joined the bafflingly abundant ranks of the Botox Lip / "Eye of the Beholder" people of the 21st century - was not, however, ever overweight. I get that we're poking fun at Monica, whose control freak hyper-perfectionist tendencies are the result of beating this fat beast from her past down to size, but there's a certain real-world cruelty I can never get past with fat suit-based humor. 

I won't dwell on it, but this stuff never lands with me. So I won't spend any time on the various "hilarious" fat suit things that happen in this episode or the series in general. (Later, Monica actually gets a fat suit. I mean, really? Do you know anyone with a fat suit in their closet? Moreover, shouldn't we, like, care that this is just fat blackface?)

My grumpiness on this trope aside, the video is a real treat to watch. It fleshes out Monica's friendship with Rachel and of course gives great payoff for the whole Ross and Rachel drama.

When it looks like Rachel's date won't show up -

Ross borrows Dad's tux and is going to swoop in to save the day. Alas, her date shows up at the last minute.

Ross emerges just in time to see the front door close, as the parents scramble to turn off the camera. Not in time to avoid capturing his heartbreak, though.

Despite anything I may have written above, this is great TV right here. It's not much for the TV Prom angle, I grant you. But hey, love and one-sweet-dream-came-true and stuff.

Let's close this out with more Psychic Soviet. I love this damn book. I've referenced it in other posts, but for those who don't know, it's a collection of tongue-in-cheek essays written by Ian Svenonius, indie wunderkind and former maestro of The Makeup, in the style of a radical Marxist surveying Anglo-American culture of the 1990s. "Seinfeld Syndrome" looks at the "rehabilitation" of the American city via Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, from its former role as the "paranoia of the compressed proletariat" to "a place desirable for white people to live (in an) amoral upper-class playground where no one need act responsibly or nicely, where sex is plentiful and always transmogrifying, owing to the self-replenishing flesh pool that every urban center offers up."

"The American city had been abandoned by the bourgeoisie as beyond repair, a social scapegoat and tawdry freakshow; now it was 'fun' and 'cool' again. This phenomenon, called 'Seinfeld Syndrome,' is a watershed of our time."

Amidst the sarcasm of Svenonius' book is a lot of relevant insight and historical context. This chapter, for example, compares what American 90s TV did to the Hausmannification of Paris: the city itself (under guise of "public works") was transformed into an extension of the state's authority. The landscape itself becomes the propaganda. And not just American 90s TV - New York itself underwent massive changes in that decade. Perhaps, tovarish, uncoincidentally.

"When NBC aired the lowbrow copy show Friends, the fate of the city was sealed, as a whole new strata of morons emigrated to its fabled dating pool. The city's new privileged inhabitants would wear their city's outlaw image as a badge of honor and even venerate it with fervor, fiercely proud of a history they had never experienced, let alone contributed to - like suburbanites living on a Civil War battlefield and boasting about Pickett's charge. 

"The indigenous city people, who had survived urban blight, gangs, systemic unemployment, police brutality, the state-sponsored crack epidemic, and PCP, finally met their match with Seinfeld Syndrome. Ethnic cleansing would happen via eviction."

Remember when the Friends went to a Hootie and Blowfish concert? And one of them (I forget who - I think it was Monica) got a hickey backstage? Read that in context of the above. It's a scary world, man. Prom's just the beginning.

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