Buffy The Vampire Slayer

16. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, “Dead Things” (2002)

The sixth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer went in a similarly dark erotic direction, as Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) launched a consciously self-destructive sexual relationship with her vampire adversary Spike (James Marsters). Like so much about the series, the relationship was played simultaneously for drama, sexual charge, and wry humor, particularly at the beginning of the mid-season episode “Dead Things.” The situation is ugly: After repeatedly swearing she would never have sex with the smitten Marsters again, Gellar has returned to him in an effort to “feel something” after her death and resurrection. (That phrasing deliberately makes their liaisons the equivalent of a clinically depressed teenager cutting herself.) But the execution is deliberately goofy. The episode opens with the sounds of violent activity: panting, gasps, grunts, furniture getting pushed around, wood smashing, glass shattering. From the noise, it could be a fight or a typical Buffy/Spike snog, but again, the wandering camera makes the joke, as it finds the neatly made, undisturbed bed first, then goes searching through the room like a puppy after its owner. Instead, it finds various other perfectly serviceable surfaces that the couple apparently rejected—pillows, chairs, tables, a coffin—before finally finding them on the floor, just finishing up and rolling away from each other. “We missed the bed again,” she chuckles, still gasping for breath. “Lucky for the bed,” he smirks. Then, of course, they have to go back to actually talking to each other, and the humor and the moment are both lost.