timetravellingbunny

After the reveal of the last scene of Faith, Hope and Trick, this episode naturally deals with Buffy learning about Angel’s return, while at the same time it’s a sequel of sorts to Phases – as it’s only the second episode to deal with Oz’s werewolfishness and takes place during the 3 days he needs to be locked up in a cage. There are three eponymous “beasts” - Oz, Angel, and Pete, the actual villain of the episode. A werewolf, a vampire and a secretly enhanced human (sounds either like a fairytale, or like a beginning of a joke). There’s a victim of a brutal murder that looks like a work of a vicious animal, and the narrative plays with the possible suspects. Just like in Phases, there’s a murder victim and the suspicion first falls on Wolf!Oz, but again it’s not him (if that were the case, we’d have a guilt-ridden Oz, which the show didn’t need at the time) but this time it’s not Angel, either.

This episode is hated in some quarters, but I think it’s better than most people give it credit for. It s a dark episode that deals with themes of the monster/man duality, which are some of the themes running through the entire show. A popular complaint about the episode is that it’s preachy with its message about abusive relationships, but I don’t think that’s fair. The story about Pete and Debbie is a textbook example of an abusive man and his battered female partner (and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, BtVS has had lots of stories mirroring real life) but this is not a Lifetime movie – Pete/Debbie serves as a compare and contrast to the much more complicated Angel/Buffy relationship (just as the Oz/Willow relationships does, on the other side. The episode asks the questions, but the resolution and any messages we may get from it about Buffy’s own life and Buffy/Angel are very ambiguous. And it has an ending that people might see as darkly romantic and even cheesy, but that on this latest rewatch feels deliberately unresolved and unsettling.
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