"Once More With Feeling" I write my last blog post.

I can’t believe that this my last blog post. In September, I had never seen a single episode, and now I find myself getting excited when I’m reading The Hairpin and they make Buffy references.
The first episode we watched was “Nightmares,” in which the worst dreams of the characters come to life. Anxiety and fear are obviously important to the gothic. In “Nightmares,” the characters’ fears are not based in reality. The spiders, clown and Big Bad are all dispelled by Buffy with relative ease.
In “Once More With Feeling,” however, the fear and anxiety has permeated the Buffy-verse. It’s going to take more than a roundhouse kick and a stake to the heart to get rid of them. This is because the fear has very little to do with the supernatural, and very much to do with personal relationships. Every character is keeping a secret that has the potential to destroy a relationship. Even when they do express their secrets, in song, no one hears them. Thus, while “Once More With Feeling,” appears light-hearted because of its musical nature, it leaves the viewer with an uncomfortable feeling because of the lack of resolution.
I felt similarly unsettled when I finished reading The Nutcracker and the King of Mice. At the end of the story, Marie has gone off to live in the Marzipan Castle and it seems like a happily-ever-after moment. However, once we realize an eight-year old is married, and her parents, who have done nothing but laugh at her, don’t seem to care. Similarly, in “Once More With Feeling,” though the villain goes back to hell, the characters, and us, are left to deal with the emotional fallout that is coming in “Tabula Rasa.”