All the Way

All the Way
Written by Stephen DeKnight
Directed by David Solomon

Original Airdate: October 30, 2001

Plot: After a long day due to the Halloween sale at the Magic Box, Xander announces to the gang that he and Anya are engaged. The gang quickly throws a small celebration party, which gives Dawn a chance to slip out with some friends for some Halloween fun and pranks. However what Dawn doesn't know is her date is a vampire...

Review

Warning: If you're spooked out by SPOILER for the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "All The Way" I strongly suggest you turn back now. I'm about to give away big time, huge SPOILER for this year's Halloween related episode...

In short: Some good, some not so good.

There's an old saying that if you want to see the best the Star Trek movies have to offer, go for the even-numbered ones.

That saying could be modernized for Buffy by saying if you want to see Buffy's take on Halloween, see the even-numbered seasons.

Buffy's take on Halloween has always been an interesting one. For the demon-world, it's kind of like Christmas is for us--a day to take off, rest and relax. I doubt very much there's much hanging out with the family or big family dinners, but it's similar to it. I've enjoyed the past two Halloween episodes a good deal and, in fact, they've grown on me more and more with repeat viewings.

So, I have to say that based on that track record and the good start that Buffy is off to in season six, I had high hopes for this year's Halloween episodes, "All the Way."

And maybe my hopes were a bit too high. Because while there were elements of this story that I liked a good deal, it never really gelled for me as a whole episode.

And there was some good stuff in the episode. And there was certainly some continuation of the laying of the groundwork for the rest of the season.

First of all, let me be the first to say that I'm glad Xander and Anya announced the news of their engagement this week. Based on what I've heard about the musical episode, I thought this would be a secret that they'd keep until they sang it out to everyone. But I'm glad to see that we got to see them not only share their good news but also get to share a nice, quiet moment with the Scooby gang as they took a chance to pause and share in the moment. Also, it was nice to see Xander get advice and wisdom from all sides about how he and Anya would have a fine future together and how they needed to start thinking about such things as house, children, retirement, etc. I liked that we saw Anya being farther ahead in the planning than Xander had thought of being. Indeed, Xander seems willing to enjoy the moment of being engaged and to not worry as much about the future while Anya sees fit to plot out the course of their lives together. I really liked seeing all that and seeing how Xander panicked at the thought of the fact that he'll be a married man with married responsibilities.

If anything, this episode was about relationships at their various stages.

We saw Xander and Anya who have a long-term relationship that is being redefined by their decision to get married.

We saw Buffy, who is not in a romantic relationship at the moment and we're seeing how this is affecting her. (I loved how we kept cutting to shots of Buffy looking uncomfortable by the relationships of her friends. She was happy for them, yes, but her expression showed there was more to it than that--maybe jealousy on some level, but also a sense of feeling she's missing something. (I know what she's going through because I feel that way at virtually every outside the office social event I attend.))

We also saw Willow and Tara, who have been fighting a lot lately. There's the old saying that you should never sleep on anger. Apparently, Willow has decided to take this one step farther and if you can't resolve the argument by the time you sleep, let's just magically make the conflict go away. We're getting hints that Willow is becoming more and more dependent on her magic powers and she's using less and less discretion in her use of them. Of course, in Willow's mind what she's doing is justified--she wants to provide decorations for her friends, she wants to quickly find Dawn, she wants to insure she and Tara get along. However, I don't really think Willow is thinking about the possible consequences of her spells. Yes, the decorations one is rather harmless, but the others could be devastating. The idea of sending an entire room full of people into an alternate universe for a minute in order to find Dawn seems like a good idea, but as Tara points out, what if she can't get them back? Also, having Tara forget why she's angry is only going to make things a whole lost worse later on. Indeed, Willow's becoming very manipulative of Tara and I am not sure I like that development. Willow perceives herself as powerful--we saw that a few weeks ago in her conversation with Giles--and that could prove dangerous. I still have a strong feeling the real evil in the season will come from an off-shoot of one of Willow's spells--an unintended consequence.

And we saw Dawn, who is out there on the cusp of learning what exactly relationships between guys and girls are all about. And it was definitely played out correctly here. Seeing Dawn, who most of the time is portrayed as the good girl (well, except her overwhelming need to be like Faith and do the "See, Want, Take" thing), attracted to the bad-boy was nicely done. And it fit in with what they were trying to do with Dawn--show her as rebelling against the authority figures she saw in Buffy and Giles.

But we did see Dawn trying to figure out what made relationships work. Seeing her discomfort in the car with Justin at the first-attempted kiss and then her actual first-kiss was nicely done. I've got to give a lot of credit to Michelle Trachtenberg who has continued to impress this year as Dawn. She got all the notes right for the moments with Justin when they were alone and I really liked how she asked him how far he wanted things to go.

So, there was a lot of things to enjoy about the story. But in the end, it all felt like isolated incidents and it didn't all up to a full plot. There was a sense that it was a story that had a lot of things it wanted to bring up, but it lacked the focus that it needed to pull them all off. Indeed, there were times when plots intersected, but the cuts between scenes felt too abrupt and the shift in focus was a bit too all over the map for my liking.

Also, I hated the fact that in order for Dawn to sneak out, she pulled the wool over Buffy's eyes.

I know that this is a typical teenager ploy--Dawn and Janice refer to it as such--but Buffy should be a bit more aware of this. For one thing, she's a bit closer in age to Dawn, so she should have been alerted to this being a ploy to sneak out simply due to her experience. Plus, she, Xander and Willow used to use this ALL THE TIME in order to stay out and slay or research. So, the fact that Buffy missed it is a bit much. Or that Giles missed it. I really feel that it made the characters appear a little too naive, given the show's history.

The other thing that bothered me was the far too obvious plotline about crazy old man Kaltenbach. The usual Buffy technique of giving us someone or something who appears to be sinister but isn't felt a bit old here. The idea that he was just a lonely man who wanted to share the toys and some Rice Krispie treats with the kids was a good one. But it felt a bit forced. And again, it was an interesting idea that was brought up and then dropped quickly. It seemed as though the only reason we went to his house was so we could find out that Justin is a vampire. Again, I go back to the way the episode seemed to shift focus abruptly. It had a lot of good ideas but it didn't execute them as well as it could or should have.

So, I've got to admit that this is probably the most disappointing Halloween episode to date. It was certainly the most disappointing episode of the season so far. However, it wasn't anything nearly as bad as Bad Beer or Killed by Death, so we're still doing well.

So, I guess that's about it for now, except a few small things...

--Buffy and Spike is a nicely growing friendship that has been fun to watch.

--So, what was Spike watching? Was it a vampire movie?

--Interesting thing: Buffy looks again to Giles to be the parent figure in Dawn's life when things are looking bad. Buffy wants to be there for the good, but not the bad. Such as the idea of letting Dawn spend the night at Janice's but not actually wanting to be the parent/disciplinarian. I will be interested to see if this continues to develop.

--I liked Giles conversation with Dawn. I almost wish we'd seen more of it.

--Willow's going to the Bronze as the place Dawn might go was interesting.

Well, that's about it for now. Overall, All the Way was an OK episode of Buffy. It's not great, but it's not horribly bad either.

My rating: 6.5 (out of 10.0)

Next up: Buffy, the musical.

"Well, you'd be right, except for the not being angry part."

--Giles