Mark Watches ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: S06E02 – Bargaining, Part Two

In the second episode of the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy struggles with her own resurrection as the threat of the demon gang becomes more serious. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Buffy.

This is going to be a difficult season, isn’t it? It’s not until the final scene of the second half of the premiere that the episode title finally made sense. After everything that Willow and the gang had done to bring Buffy back, none of them truly thought about what it was they were doing to this person. And above all, none of them considered that Buffy didn’t want to come back.

I admit that I warmed to the motorcycle gang as a villainous force after seeing “Bargaining, Part Two.” It’s fascinating to me that their chaos and violence is contrasted with Buffy’s cold, calculating behavior. While Sunnydale and the Scoobies are subject to a horrific thrashing, we watch a newly resurrected Buffy stumble quietly through town, her vision blurred. The physicality of her resurrection is addressed as much as the emotional and psychological angle. And throughout this all, the question hangs over the episode: What the hell have the Scoobies done?

Yet even before they all have to deal with this, the Scoobies first have to cope with the fact that Buffy is gone, and they have to deal with the demon infestation in Sunnydale. You can see the panic growing on everyone’s faces throughout the episode. Anya freaks out about Xander’s safety. Willow has a very messy breakdown about her spell not working. (Oh god, I hate when Alyson Hannigan cries because she’s so good at it.) We watch Tara and Xander do their best to comfort their friends. And when they all reunite in the Magic Box, Anya brings up the one thing they hadn’t been able to say: they needed Buffy Summers. Giles is gone (and he’s not even in the episode once!), Spike is protecting Dawn, and Willow is still weak from attempting to raise Buffy. What are they supposed to do? How are these four people supposed to take down an entire demon gang? And it’s not that they haven’t been able to manage things for the past five months without Buffy! I think they’ve done a fine job. But they hadn’t been quite this overwhelmed before, and it’s the exact kind of situation where Buffy would be able to figure out a way to take on so many demons. Even Spike is having his own crisis, unsure of how he can get Dawn to realize that Buffy is really gone. He knows that things would be so much better if Buffy were around to help out.

But she’s not there.

Yet, that is. I think “Bargaining, Part Two” does a fantastic job showing us the logistics of Buffy being brought back to life. She has to wake up in her own coffin. My god, I can’t even begin to fathom what a traumatizing experience this all was. She dug herself out of her own grave. She looked at her own grave. SHE LOOKED AT HER OWN GRAVE. Holy fuck, that would mess up any of us. And then she wanders through Sunnydale, and it’s this impossibly heinous version of what it once was. Cars are on fire, houses are burning, demons ride by on motorcycles, and this is the first thing Buffy sees. Why is this important? It contributes towards Buffy’s state of mind, which she’ll reveal to Dawn near the end of the episode.

But before I get there, I have to discuss a couple other things. Look, I know the Buffybot is a robot. I know this! I know it deep in my heart, and there’s no question that it is a robot. So I must admit that despite this, I still shouted when the Buffybot was drawn and quartered. It’s a horrifying scene, one that demonstrates just how pervasively vile the demon gang is. (Well, then there’s also the really gross rape threat later on, too. Why is it that women must be threatened with that so often? Buffy has largely avoided the trope, so I was a little perplexed to see it brought up so casually here. Not that I don’t want to see the show address rape, but it was just like POOF THERE IT IS OKAY NOW LET’S MOVE ON.) Even though I knew Buffy had been brought back, I wasn’t sure if she’d be in a state to fight the demon horde. The scene, then, acted to scare the crap out of me.

On that note, I was frightened because I didn’t know what it was that Willow resurrected. Sure, it was Buffy, but where had she been? How long would it take her to adapt to being back on Earth? Would she ever feel fine with having been brought back from the afterlife? The trauma she went through just to get out of her coffin was enough to make her appear like a feral animal at times. Even when she comes upon her friends, it’s not even clear that she recognizes them. It takes a threat from Razor for some sort of instinct to take over in Buffy, and I was shocked by how natural her fighting was. Hell, did it seem stronger than usual to anyone else? Perhaps it was just the contrast between her being frightened and quiet and the shock of her rapid activity.

Still, something was different about Buffy, and the episode wasn’t giving me many clues as to what was going on inside her head. It isn’t until she runs from the other Scoobies and comes upon the tower that Glory had built that things started to come together. It was heartbreaking enough that Buffy was returning to the very place where she gave up her own life. But when a bizarre moment with the Buffybot leads Dawn to Buffy, I find out just how fucked up this is for Buffy.

“Is this hell?” she asks her sister. And in that one moment, I know what’s going on. I’m happy that we get the flashback to “The Gift” because it reminded me of Buffy’s face before she jumped. She was relieved. She was happy. Yes, she was saving Dawn and the rest of the world, but she was finally going to get the chance to end her life of pain, stress, and loss. And here she is, standing in the exact spot where she jumped to her death, and the life she gave up is repeating all around her. Her friends depend on her to save them. Demons and vampires and other ghastly beasts create chaos, and she is the one that fixes things. It’s the same life, all over again, and it’s exactly what she wanted a break from.

And here she is. Alive. Impossibly alive, and doing the exact thing she wanted to stop doing. For Buffy, that is hell. Oh my god, my heart just fucking shattered when she said those words. What have the Scoobies done???

It’s here that the episode title finally makes sense. In that delicate moment, Dawn bargains with her older sister. The only thing she can think to offer Buffy is her own vulnerability: she needs her. Even if Buffy still has a lot to work out in her own head, it’s Dawn’s tearful begging that causes Buffy to finally act and get the two of them to safety. But what sort of safety is that? Dawn is ecstatic that her older sister has returned, but Buffy’s face gives us a glimpse into the turmoil in her own heart. Buffy is not happy to be back. She had already resolved to leave this world, and now her friends brought her back.

My god, this season is going to be agonizing. Fuck.

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