Summary
In this one we sip tea with Miss Edith about Oz’s last time in Sunnydale, Spike and Adam, and Willow coming out to Buffy!
Thanks for joining us for Season 4, Episode 19: New Moon Rising.
Listen
Links
We have a Patreon account where you can support us and get access to all kinds of fun things!
You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
We also have a threadless shop here! It’s mostly for our other podcast, but if you’re looking for something to drink Miss Edith’s tea out of, we’ve got you covered!
You can also always email us with your thoughts, questions, and ideas! We love hearing from you! You can send an email to mythtakenbtvspodcast AT gmail DOT com.
Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast 
So I just checked, and it looks like I already rambled on in the Wild At Heart episode post about the Oz and Tara scene and the implications re: domestic violence and how it echoes other male characters being ‘taken over’ by the ‘monster inside,’ so I won’t get into those specifics too much more here, but I will say that I very much agree with your discussion. This is something that’s very difficult about shows like Buffy that deal with fantastical elements, especially when the creators specifically try to incorporate the mystical as metaphor. Doing that with one character, once, is one thing, but at some point it starts to seem like a preoccupation with violence against women (and I’m not saying the show is trying to glorify it, or anything, but why SO MANY repeated depictions of this type of dynamic?). I’m completely with both of you on the fact that Oz’s werewolf status has always been dealt with in a much more straightforward way, and has never been a metaphor for domestic violence, so why shove that in there here?
I also agree that Oz felt a bit off in this episode, and I think that was intentional, at least in part, because he wasn’t staying on the show, and maybe it was even more for the audience – I know I’m biased, but I feel like Oz was a bit of a fan favorite, and maybe this episode was partly an attempt to give everyone closure on the character while making him leaving a bit less painful. But in order to make it less painful, they had to make him less… miss-able. He’s easier to lift out if he only cares about Willow and no one else, and especially if it starts to seem like his werewolf nature is something that’s going to start coming out uncontrollably when he gets really emotional. It made his departure easier in certain ways, but it also was a disservice to what we had known of Oz’s character. I mean, yes, to be fair, his love for Willow was pretty central to his character, but similar things could be said for Anya (w/Xander) and Tara, at least for a while with their characters.
LikeLike