Once More, With Feeling

As I’ve mentioned on here every so often, I’ve been working my way through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series from beginning to end by renting the DVDs from NetFlix. I’m up to season six now (which means I’m going to have to take a break pretty soon, as season seven isn’t out for a little while yet), and I’m still thoroughly enjoying the show.

Season four had what is so far my all-time favorite episode — ‘Hush’ — but last night I watched what’s now a very close second: ‘Once More, With Feeling’.

In deference to friends who are also working their way through Buffy for the first time, the rest of these ramblings is behind the cut… Now, I’d heard about ‘Once More With Feeling’ (a.k.a. “Buffy — The Musical”) before hand, but I knew nothing about it beyond that it was a musical episode, so I was really looking forward to seeing it. I didn’t know how they were going to present it (music and spoken word, like a true musical; purely music, operetta-style; possibly something else), or how they were going to make it work within the confines of the show — though, admittedly, with a show like Buffy it’s easy enough to explain nearly anything away with a little creative work.

I knew I was going to be in for a treat when the show opened to a widescreen ratio and old movie style credits. Obviously they weren’t going to go about this halfway! I spent the rest of the next hour with a goofy grin on my face, often laughing out loud as the trademark wordplay worked its way into the songs.

Musically, while it’s not perfect — the cast are actors, after all, and not professional singers (though Anthony Stewart Head and Amber Benson both do quite well) — it is a lot of fun, with styles bouncing all over the place, from soft-shoe jazz to rock power ballads, and even a few reprises of earlier themes popping up later on in the show. Whedon is obviously a fan of musicals, and that shows throughout the show, not just in the music, but also in his framing of the shots and the choreography of the dances.

While it’s definitely something that could only be done as a one-off concept episode, I had a blast with it. Enough of a blast that when I found out that the soundtrack is on iTMS, it was downloading to my computer just a few moments later. My favorite track from the show? Definitely Spike’s showcase number, Rest in Peace. Not only does it do a wonderful job of expressing Spike’s frustration in his non-relationship with Buffy, but it’s a fun power rock pseudo-ballad, and James Marsters does a credible job with it (even if his accent does slip a bit from time to time).

While ‘Hush’ still takes the prize as my all-time favorite episode that I’ve seen so far, ‘Once More With Feeling’ is a very, very close second. If only there were more television shows like this, I might actually bother to watch TV more often.

“Main Title (from ”Once More with Feeling“)” by Orchestra from the album Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling (2002, 0:27).