Death comes to Sunnydale.
Yay! Funny Angel!
Buffy Bonus
Joss Whedon gives us a sneak peek at the season finale.
May 22, 2001
A wise woman once said that trying to get Joss Whedon to reveal anything is like trying to eat Jell-O with a fork.
"Fork?" says Joss mock-indignantly. "With chopsticks!"
No disagreements there. It's the eve of the fifth season finale and 100th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as we chat on the phone, the Man Behind It All is still being cagey as all get-out. That said, can he tell us anything? Like how many boxes of tissue I'll need?
"There should be some tissues, or I'm doing something wrong!" he says. "All the stuff about Buffy and her family and her sister and whether Dawn is her sister and what she means to her and what it means to be the Slayer is going to be resolved through fisticuffs, as is my usual bent. Not everybody gets out of here alive."
Such a monumental episode was tough to mount, says Joss, but ultimately, it was worth it. "It was so hard to film," he says. "It was so big. We just said, 'You know what? Let's make the 100th...100thy.' So it's a great big lotta fightin' and a lot of emoting and a lot of learning and growing and crying and punching. And some dying. 'Cause you gotta have dying."
Indeed you do, but this leads us into next season, when Buffy takes flight from The WB to UPN. Joss has said before that the theme of season 6 is "Oh, Grow Up!" So how exactly are we going to see our beloved Scoobies taking on the realm of grown-up-dom?
"Our gang is entering the adult world, jobs and relationships are getting more serious," he says." [They're] taking care of house payments and things that."
He pauses for a moment, then, sounding uncannily like sarcasm whiz Xander: "People are like, 'House payments??? I'm tunin' in!'"
Now, now. At this point, I think we'd tune in to watch The Buffster read the phone book. In any case, expect Buffy and Co. to learn that there's a lot more to adult life than staying up late and eating Doritos whenever you want.
"Basically, they enter the adult world and find, 'Oh, that's why adults seem so stupid, this is really hard!'" says Joss. "College, even though it has unprecedented freedom, has a safety net. Although Willow and Tara will still be in college, not everybody will. Juggling life, trying to become a grown-up all of a sudden, is really what it's about. That will also be reflected in the villains. And everybody's gonna make a lot of really bad choices -- but about more grown-up things than before."
Like house payments?
"You should probably cut the part about house payments," Joss says. "I can just see everybody going, [affects voice very close to The Simpsons Comic Book Guy] 'Oh, I don't think so!' But yeah, it's time to visit the grown-up world and find out why your parents seem so dumb."
As for Buff spin-off Angel, which is set to stay on The WB next season, Joss says that we can expect to continue to see Angel's funny side -- and yes, there will be more karaoke.
"There will always be karaoke, because karaoke's funny," he says. "[Angel] went to a very dark place last year, he's going to a very different place this year. Very unexpected, very emotional. But we will always try to balance with the funny, because [David] Boreanaz is truly funny. And we have more fun with the character when we lighten him up -- when we show how cheap or vain or petty Angel can be. We're going to put him through a lot of stuff, that's really going to pull him, emotionally. But we're not going to turn him into a I-don't-speak-for-a-whole-episode killing machine, 'cause we did that. So, yes, the fun will be there."
In the meantime, check out the sure-to-be-shocking season finales tonight starting at 8 pm on The WB. And check back next week for my fun-filled full interview with The Whedon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
