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"The Body" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of the supernatural drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode was written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon and originally aired on The WB in the United States on February 27, 2001. In the series, Buffy Summers is a teenager chosen by mystical forces and endowed with superhuman powers to defeat vampires, demons, and other evils in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She is supported in her struggles by a close circle of friends and family, nicknamed the "Scooby Gang". In "The Body", Buffy is powerless as she comes upon her lifeless mother, who has died of a brain aneurysm. Although Buffy and her friends deal with death every week, often in very gruesome and fantastic ways, in this episode they are bewildered by the natural death of Joyce Summers, the divorced mother of Buffy and her sister Dawn and occasionally a mother figure to their friends. They struggle to comprehend what the loss means to each of them and the group. Buffy must begin to face her life and her duties as the Slayer without parental support and comfort. The episode was stripped of all music, and disorienting effects were included to convey the sense of displacement and loss associated with the death of a close family member. "The Body" aired to wide acclaim, and has since been ranked by several critics as one of the greatest television episodes ever broadcast.

Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is assisted from season one by her close friends, who collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang: Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), whose primary strength is his devotion to Buffy, and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), who begins dabbling in witchcraft and grows progressively more powerful. They are mentored by Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Buffy's "Watcher", and joined by Xander's girlfriend Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield), who was a vengeance demon until her powers were taken away. Anya is often at a loss to know how to communicate with humans, and her speech is frequently abrupt. In the fourth season, Willow became romantically involved with Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), also a witch. Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) presents an overall theme episodes tie into. Roz Kaveney identifies family and belonging as the overall theme of the fifth season. Buffy's mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) begins experiencing headaches at the beginning of the season, once collapsing and requiring hospitalization. She subsequently has a brain tumor removed. She has been recovering well. In the previous episode, "I Was Made to Love You", she receives flowers from a male suitor, which Buffy finds at the end of that episode. The fifth season also introduces Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), Buffy's 14 year old sister. Each season has a primary antagonist called the Big Bad; in the fifth season this takes the form of a powerful goddess named Glory (Clare Kramer). Whedon was not interested in finding a life affirming lesson for "The Body". Rather, he wanted to capture the isolation and boredom involved in the minutes and hours after finding a loved one has died, what he termed "the black ashes in your mouth numbness of death". He did not intend to resolve any religious or existential questions about the end of life, but wanted to examine the process in which a person becomes a mere body. Whedon's mother, a teacher, also died of a cerebral aneurysm, As soon as the scene was finished with Gellar "at a fever pitch", they restarted it where she comes in the door happily, which Whedon regretted for the emotional range Gellar was required to endure. She reported that the atmosphere on the set of "The Body" was strange and tense because she had been a regular character throughout the series and she was suddenly playing a corpse. She found the part difficult to play, not only for the stillness, but getting into the make up, and lying on the morgue table with other bodies. The most difficult scene for Whedon to film was Willow panicking in her dormitory room. Her obsession about what to wear to visit Buffy was inspired by Whedon's own experiences when he was at a loss for what tie to wear for a friend's funeral. According to Whedon, the conversation about the kiss was approached by the network executives, who were concerned with the number of gay relationships on the network. Whedon countered that the kiss was "true to character" and said he would quit the show if the network forbade it. It was the only time during the series he threatened to do so. For the rest of the season, the sexual relationship between Willow and Tara was represented metaphorically by witchcraft, and none of the WB executives realized it. In the end, Whedon praised the way the WB handled the display of affection in "The Body", saying "They raised an eyebrow, but they've been great. I give the WB props when it came to the [characters' first] kiss. What I want to show is real affection, and 'The Body' turned out to be the perfect place to put it in. To the network's credit, they not only aired it, but they did not advertise it. I thought that was pretty classy." Stephen Tropiano in Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV writes that this approach was "truly groundbreaking"; no long speech, no huge discovery: "Like Willow, we're made to feel as if her love for Tara is the most natural thing in the world". Tropiano calls it "A simple kiss. A quiet, simple moment. Two lovers kissing. Just like lovers do." Shortly before the end of the scene, while Xander is talking, Willow can be seen silently mouthing "I love you" to Tara. Audiences reacted more emotionally than Whedon expected to Emma Caulfield's performance. Anya's blunt innocence was similar to a plot twist, as viewers did not expect the depth of sensitivity that she portrayed in her monologue, which Whedon considers "the heart of the experience" and critic Noel Murray reiterates as the "whole point of the episode in bolded, capital letters". Furthermore, similar to Xander's parking ticket and the sounds of life outside Buffy's house, in Sunnydale vampires are a normal experience, and it was intended to show that life for Buffy continues.

In Nikki Stafford's analysis, the reactions of Buffy, Dawn, Xander, Willow, Anya, and Tara represent stages of Elisabeth Kübler Ross' five stages of grief in different parts. Joyce served as a parent figure to all of Buffy's friends, whose home lives were often unstable or unloving, thus making her death more poignant to all of them. Willow mentions her parents several times throughout the series, but her father is never seen. Her mother is portrayed only once in "Gingerbread", at first as an academic so preoccupied with her career that she is unable to communicate with Willow, and then—with Joyce—under the spell of a demon and in the throes of moral panic, attempting to burn her own daughter at the stake for being involved in witchcraft. Xander's parents are described by him and those who have been to his house as alcoholic and verbally abusive. Even Anya, severely wanting in social graces, has lost someone she admires and trusts. Giles also grieves for the loss of a friend and—in one episode when the adults fall under a spell making them retreat into an adolescent state—a lover. Lorna Jowett in Sex and the Slayer writes that Joyce represents stability and normality. For the Scoobies, her death destroys the illusion that normal life is trouble free; it is just as challenging as encountering supernatural forces. Finding her mother's body, Buffy at first denies what she sees, to the point of imagining alternate realities. Whedon stated that these mini dream sequences were like documentaries; people who find their loved ones dead are desperate to imagine a different, better outcome, and they create fantasies that cause much more pain when they are forced to return to the harshness of reality. In her shock, Buffy retreats to a childlike state of confusion, calling to her mother when she does not answer: "Mom? Mom? Mommy?" Emma Caulfield was also given the direction for her voice to rise to a childlike pitch at the end of her speech to give the same effect. According to Buffy scholar Rhonda Wilcox, the themes of maturation and facing adult responsibilities begin with the departure of Buffy's boyfriend Riley Finn six episodes before, and crystallize in the preceding episode in which Buffy realizes she does not need a boyfriend to be fulfilled. At the end of that episode she is confronted with Joyce's death, which is fully explored in "The Body". Facing responsibilities became the major theme of the sixth season. One critic writes, "Drastic as it was, killing off Joyce was the logical way to bring Buffy and Dawn closer together, sever Buffy's last ties to girlhood and emphasize Buffy's inability to accept the limits of her power, a recurring theme this season." Kristine Sutherland stated that the script was "amazing", specifically at capturing the detachment: "It's not something you can process. I mean mortality is just not part of your vocabulary when you're that age." The transition between the Christmas dinner scene and the living room scene is abrupt, and the sound of Buffy and Joyce shouting because they dropped a pie on the floor carries over into the silence of Joyce's lifeless face and Buffy standing alone in the living room. This effect is also used when shifting between Buffy's alternate version of her mother being "good as new" in the hospital and the paramedics trying to revive her. In the car on the way to Willow's dormitory, Anya is shot by a camera mounted on the front bumper, separated from the audience by the windshield. Xander, driving, faces the other way; neither of them speak and only the sound of the car can be heard. Joyce Millman at Salon. com writes of the sound issues, "The effect was almost Bergmanesque in its starkness. The spooky stillness and the long, spacey pauses in conversation as characters struggled to articulate their feelings exaggerated the sense of time elongating and standing still." Whedon shot the conversation up close several times, filming over the shoulder and reaction shots, but eventually went with a more distanced point of view. Television critic Gareth McLean writes that this decision is "a move that makes it more courageous than, for instance, ER. There were no soaring strings or plaintive piano to trigger an emotional response. Instead the soundtrack took in the ambient noises of wind chimes, doors squeaking, footsteps on carpets. Conversations were stilted and awkward, but the spaces in between always mattered." Television critic Alesia Redding and editor Joe Vince of the South Bend Tribune write, "I was riveted by this show This isn't just one of the best Buffy episodes of all time. It's one of the best episodes of TV of all time." Redding adds, "If you watch this incredible episode and don't recognize it as great TV, you're hopeless  A 'fantasy' show delivers the most stark and realistic take on death I've ever seen, deftly depicting how a loved one who dies suddenly becomes 'the body'." Gareth McLean in The Guardian rejects the notion that Buffy is similar to other "schmaltzy American teen show(s)" like Dawson's Creek: "This episode was a brave, honest and wrenching portrayal of death and loss. The way this was handled by Joss Whedon was ingenious. Time slowed down and the feeling of numbness was palpable as Buffy and her gang tried to come to terms with Joyce's death." McLean especially appreciated the small details of Buffy protecting Joyce's dignity and the confusion shown by the characters. He concludes, "Joyce may be dead but long live Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Joe Gross in the Austin American Statesman calls the episode "devastatingly calm" and states that "the entire cast and crew should have received some sort of Emmy for 'The Body. At Salon. com, Joyce Millman writes, "there hasn't been a finer hour of drama on TV this year than 'The Body' You have to hand it to the writers; Joyce's demise came as a complete surprise. In that instant, Buffy's childhood officially ends. Even if Buffy gets stiffed in every other Emmy category this year, 'The Body' should convince the nominating committee that Gellar is for real I can't remember the last time I saw a more wrenching portrayal of the shock of loss." Andrew Gilstrap at PopMatters declares it "possibly the finest hour of television I've seen, bar none  It is an incredibly moving episode, one that finally admits that you don't walk away from death unscathed. It also shows that, for all the group's slaying experience, they really weren't prepared for death when it stole a loved one." Gilstrap went on to say the series did not again address death and grief of this magnitude until, in another shocking turn of events, Tara dies of a stray gunshot in the sixth season. Jerry McCormick in The San Diego Union Tribune agrees, rating Joyce's death as having the same emotional impact as Tara's in "Seeing Red", both of which he listed as the saddest in the series. Kira Schlechter in The Patriot News declares "The Body" "one of the finest episodes of any series ever", stating that the silence and novel cinematography are "remarkable and the writing is brilliant". Buffy and Dawn's conversation at her school, Schlechter says, is "positively wrenching". When the series ended in 2003, Amy Antangelo in the Boston Herald and Siona LaFrance of the New Orleans Times Picayune both rated the best Buffy episodes giving "The Body" equal billing at the top with "Hush" and "Once More, with Feeling", LaFrance designating the episode an "instant classic". Jonathan Last in The Weekly Standard lists "The Body" eighth out of the ten best Buffy episodes, writing that it is "the series' most difficult episode because it's real—and not real in the way ER or The Practice or Law & Order, all hyper versions of reality, are real. At some point, most of us will experience a day like Buffy has in 'The Body' and we sense that the writers have gotten nearly every detail of that day—right down to the absence of a musical score—right." In the A. V. Club, Noel Murray also finds small details compelling, such as the camera's focus on the paper towel Buffy uses to cover the vomit on the carpet. He does, however, write that some of the shots "come off a little gimmicky, but the ones that work are so effective that it seems petty to complain that Whedon overdoes it at times. (Besides, different moments are likely to move different people.)" In addition to praising Gellar's acting, Buffy scholar Ian Shuttleworth comments on the cast and the nuanced numbness and confusion of the characters, paired with the moments of silence in the episode: "It is simply one of the finest pieces of television drama, and the single finest depiction of bereavement in any medium, that I have ever seen." Nikki Stafford, author of Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, calls "The Body" "an absolute masterpiece", explaining that it is "hands down the single most terrifying, heart breaking, painful, and amazing hour of television I have ever seen". She praises the entire cast equally, but highlights Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, and Emma Caulfield. Stafford also praised Kristine Sutherland—as did Whedon—for having to lie motionless with her eyes open for hours upon hours over eight days of filming. In 2015, Gavin Hetherington of SpoilerTV looked back at the episode fourteen years later. Upon reviewing the episode, he called it "one of the best hours of television" he had ever seen and went on to say "I don't think any other supernatural show has ever had a more beautiful episode than The Body". When the episode was originally broadcast in the United States on the WB network on February 27, 2001, it received a Nielsen rating of 3.5 and a share of 5, and was watched by 6 million viewers. The episode placed fifth in its timeslot, and 82nd among broadcast television for the week of February 26 – March 4, 2001. It was the most watched program on the WB that night, and the second most watched program that week, trailing 7th Heaven. This was a slight increase from a 3.4 rating and 87th position achieved by the previous episode. The episode was released on DVD on October 28, 2002 in Region 2, and December 9, 2003 in Region 1. Although the episode received positive reviews, it was not nominated for any Emmy awards. Rhonda Wilcox attributes this to the Emmys being a "bastion of conservative popular taste", automatically rejecting television shows in the fantasy/science fiction genres. The script was nominated for a Nebula Award, given for excellence in science fiction/fantasy writing.