Original Airdate: December 14, 1999
Writer/ Director/ Executive Producer: Joss Whedon
Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson
Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head
Television is supposed to be a visual medium, and yet it
consistently seems like you would be hard-pressed to find a lot of support for
that statement on the air. Plopped in our living rooms as a replacement for
radio, during the ‘50s, many shows were originally broadcast live, meaning
there was barely any camera movement or location change. Multi-camera sitcoms
didn’t help matters in terms of visual invention, at least not until “Sports
Night” came along. You could see the actors, sure, but the spoken word was
still the key. Flash forward to today, and that still seems to be the rule.
Because of budget constraints, most television shows are stuck in courtrooms,
crime scenes and apartment buildings. Reality shows shake their cameras and
make everyone look like a clone of Lauren Conrad by using the same filters. As
a writer and lover of fantastic dialogue, this doesn’t bother me (love ‘ya,
Aaron, Amy and David!), but you still have to stand up and applaud when a
creator allows you to experience television storytelling in a new way.
Going into its fourth season, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
had become famous for the snappy dialogue and excellent characterization that
was spearheaded by show creator Joss Whedon. Also for never being nominated for
any major Emmys. Maybe Whedon was complimented one too many times on his snappy
dialogue. Maybe he had just caught a Charlie Chaplin marathon on Turner Classic
Movies. Or maybe he just sensed that the fourth season of his show wasn’t
connecting like the others, and decided to throw out the rulebook.
“Hush” represents the peak in quality for a show that
was regularly excellent. Despite doing something so off the beaten path, it
still manages to completely embody the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” viewers tuned
into every other week. Buffy was still Buffy and the tone and humor was in line
with what we always expected. But by getting rid of dialogue, Whedon underlined
that he didn’t need the banter to make the show special. It already was.
Whedon opens the episode with a dream sequence, complete
with a little blonde girl who sings a song about the monster-of-the-week. When
a show goes out of its way to craft a horrifying song about its creatures
(called The Gentlemen) and then puts the lyrics into the mouth of the creepiest
being on the planet (those with young blonde girls as children will certainly
back me up here), you know that the show is going to go for the throat. I did
not mean that last part to be a pun, but I’m going to go with it.
The teaser and first act are filled with all the usual
witty witticisms, though purposefully a little more stale than usual. This is
to underline that words can be used as a means to block communication as often
as it is used to embrace it. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Riley (Marc
Blucas) talk, talk, talk instead of actually admitting their feelings. Anya
(Emma Caulfield) is angry with Xander (Nicholas Brendon) because he won’t put a
label on their “relationship.” My beloved Tara (Amber Benson) is completely
unable to speak in her Wicca group because everyone else is talking about
things that don’t matter. And then the Gentlemen arrive, open up a box and
everyone loses their voice.
The initial realization of the mass mutism (I think I
created a word there) is brilliantly written and staged. Buffy and Willow
(Alyson Hannigan) have a panicked conversation in their dorm room where you can
almost…almost tell what they are trying to say by lip reading. Xander panics
and tries to call Buffy, only to realize the moment she picks up the phone that
neither can do anything to communicate that way. Riley is almost killed because
the elevator to the military compound needs voice recognition. And there’s a
fantastic beat, so simple to describe yet ingenious in execution, where a
random student drops a bottle and the viewer jumps out of his seat. All of this
is set to the fantastic music of Christophe Beck, who makes the affair feel
like a classic Universal horror movie. There have been a few other television
episodes that used a lack of dialogue as a storytelling technique (“The Twilight
Zone” episode “The Invaders” comes to mind), but never like this. In fact, dare
I say that no other show in the history of television could have pulled this
type of storyline off successfully in the way this episode of “Buffy the
Vampire Slayer” did? I think I do dare.
Yes, there is some dialogue sprinkled into the episode,
most notably when the characters watch a news program and when Maggie Walsh
(Lindsay Crouse) uses a machine that verbalizes what she types. But these beats
feel like network notes more than something that creatively blossoms from the
situation. But for the most part, Whedon creates a purpose for his lack of
words. Buffy and Riley embrace their relationship in a way they could not do
when they could speak. Xander beats up Spike (James Marsters) after
misinterpreting a situation with Anya, proving that he cares about her. Tara
proves stronger than expected when she connects with Willow. And all the while
we get genuine belly laughs out of the situation. Buffy gets the eyebrows of
her friends raised when she makes a questionable motion in her chair at the
Scooby summit, and later gets angry with Giles’ drawing of her because the hips
are too big. Gellar’s performance in the episode is really a revelation, able
to perfectly switch gears from humor to pathos to fighter in an instant.
And did I mention the episode is genuinely frightening?
Though there was a lot of suspense to be found in the best episodes of “Buffy,”
it wasn’t exactly known to cause the same goosebumps and generate the same
scares shows like “The X-Files” and “The Night Stalker” did. But here the
Gentlemen and their straight-jacket-clad minions are scary as hell. They look
like a skeleton that has grown skin, if that makes sense, and their make-up
design is an obvious tip of the hat to Lon Chaney’s make-up in the original
“Phantom of the Opera.” It feels like a lot of time (and the budget) went into
crafting the monsters, their lair and their method of transportation (floating
a few inches over the street), and the result is a villain for the ages.
After the triumph of “Hush,” which earned the only major
Emmy nomination in the show’s history, for Best Writing, Whedon began
experimenting much more often (usually to great success) in storytelling
techniques. The fourth season finale related all the main characters’ dreams.
The season five episode “The Body” remains the heart-wrenching examination of
death in television (hell, for my money television and film) history. And then
there’s the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling.” To be bluntly honest,
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was the reason I wanted to become a television
writer, and this episode changed the way I look at storytelling. Any single
episode that can do that is some kind of special.
“Hush” is available on Buffy’s fourth season DVD, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Hulu Plus (ugh).
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