5.04 Out of My Mind

[Clare]

5.04 Out of My Mind - Episode #082
Riley begins to suffer after months of being used as an Initiative lab-rat; Spike attempts to get his chip removed.

Review (also post a score out of 10) and discuss this episode.

[cyclica]

Not the best episode by a long way. Some of the emotional stuff drags on way too long, especially the buffy riley scene in the cave. I did enjoy seeing harmony, and at long last seeing spike get his chip removed ... but in the end it didn't happen. Which is annoying. And then spike falls in love with buffy. For some reason. Plah.

I give this one a 5.

[partcynic]

5x04 “Out of My Mind”

Episode Rating = 4

The debut entry from sub-par scribe Rebecca Rand Kirshner, “Out of My Mind” is essentially an encapsulation of the stylistic changes made in S5 – most of which I found to be detrimental to the show’s quality. It’s not that the episode in itself is bad, but I struggle to identify a central theme, and the ‘story’ feels more like a bunch of simultaneously occurring events than a cohesive and organised narrative. Without real structure, “Buffy” is starting to flirt heavily with soapy writing, and this ep is worryingly full of emotion-free drama and contrived plotting. Thankfully, the Harmony material and the general wit of the dialogue make the ep below average instead of disastrous – but I’ll say that this is not what I want from the show, and little about it warrants repeat viewing.

What I Liked about “Out of My Mind”:

- The opening fight scene is entertaining; no matter how silly it is for Buffy to be staking vamps before they’ve even climbed out of their graves. Her frustration after Riley (and then, Spike) interrupted her was funny, as was Spike falling into the open grave (a joke we had back in “Some Assembly Required”, but still fine).

- As a whole, the dialogue is good. Scenes like Willow and Buffy’s chat about college were humorous, even though they didn’t serve any real purpose.

- It’s cool to see Xander and Giles continuing to set up the Magic Box, and Xander already feels like he’s had a major, post-“Replacement” change. His whole demeanour is calmer and more assertive, and I like that he’s finally found a vocation he enjoys.

- Willow and Tara are fine. Their little chat in the Magic Box is cute, and Willow altering the light spell to make it more powerful was a good foreshadow of her later attitude to witchcraft.

- Harmony was the best thing about the episode, and I enjoyed every one of her scenes. Taken in appropriate doses, she’s hilarious, and her misguided belief that she’s Buffy’s arch-nemesis is endearing.

- On first viewing, Joyce’s collapse was startling, and it was very interesting that it was preceded by her suddenly questioning Dawn’s existence (which we’ve now had twice in four episodes, reminding the audience that we aren’t being expected to believe she’s really Buffy’s sibling). As much as I may dislike the Key arc, I give respect to the writers for having planned out most of its elements in advance (like with this, and Ben making his first, seemingly innocuous appearance).

- Dawn was tolerable. She had a couple of decent lines, and her interjections about Castro and the CIA during the bedroom scene were ‘little sister-y’ without being annoying. However, she’s still being portrayed as much younger than her stated age.

What I Disliked about “Out of My Mind”:

- The attempts at plotting are poor. For example, while Dawn discovering Riley’s condition via messing about with a stethoscope was novel, it’s a bit much that the entire story hinged on that one, randomly-done act. There were also several instances of characters randomly appearing when it best suited the story, such as Buffy and Riley finding Spike despite having no idea where he might have gone. And were we supposed to infer that Riley was indeed being monitored by the government, so that when Buffy said something into his phone, they paid attention?

- The incidental music continues to undermine the material it accompanies. The ‘sensitive’ stuff is cloying and syrupy, and the piece that accompanied the scene with Riley playing basketball was the type of Eighties cheese the show would openly mock in “Once More, With Feeling”.

- Spike’s “make your neck my chalice and bathe in your blood” posturing is clichéd and hard to take seriously. The character has moved on from his original persona to the point that he isn’t really intimidating any more. Still, it would have been infinitely preferable to keep him in this mode, instead of making the awful decision that he was now in love with Buffy and always had been. The whole ‘twist’ is a classic case of bending characters to suit the writers’ whims, and a convoluted way of keeping a fan-favourite around.

- The Xander/Anya “my friend/your friend” exchange in the Magic Box was weird, and seemed like it was trying to say something despite not making any real point.

- Riley went from being great for an episode to being pretty unbearable. I don’t care about his newfound masculinity issues, which are out-of-character in the first place (in “A New Man”, he was actually turned on by Buffy’s superior abilities). And why exactly was he claiming that she only wanted him for his ”powers”, when his super-strength was expressly stated to be a complication of his sudden illness?

- The cave scene is very poor, and fails in its attempts to be emotional. The dialogue is hackneyed and unrealistic, and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s acting is below her typical standard. A lot of the individual lines were questionable (such as the one I mentioned in my previous point), and Buffy’s claim that she’d opened up to Riley in a way she’d never done with anyone else was not supported by anything we’ve seen on screen. While I like Buffy/Riley, their supposedly deep relationship has been the product of the writers telling us it’s deep, instead of the characters interacting in a manner that actively demonstrates it – so it’s no surprise that they’ve never captured viewers’ imaginations in the way that Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike have done.

- If the writers were going to do an episode (and an arc) that would heavily involve hospitals, it might have been good to go for realism. I have a really hard time believing that the doctor would have been able to perform both brain and heart surgery (specialisation doesn’t work that way), and that he could do two immensely taxing procedures on his own, one after the other with the sub-par equipment at hand. Spike being wide awake and jerking around while having his brain cut into was nonsensical (even for a vampire), and the scenes ended up being ridiculous.

- I don’t know if it was intentional, but Buffy comes across terribly in her final scene with Riley. While his own reluctance to deal with his problems did aggravate his illness, the poor guy has just come close to dying, had major surgery, and had a crossbow bolt shot into his leg – yet Buffy ditches him without even ensuring he can get home safely. Just how unfeeling is she? This goes way beyond ‘relationship of convenience’ to failing basic empathy 101, and contradicts all of the tripe she spouted in the cave.

Do I like this episode more or less than I did the last time I watched it?

Less. “Out of My Mind” isn’t terrible, but it has very little to commend it beyond its witty dialogue. The heavy emphasis on the bland Buffy/Riley pairing, non-existent story and cheap attempts at tearjerking all make this tough to get through, and the stupidity with Spike at the end hardly makes me enthusiastic about the future. Still, Harmony was great, and she was enough to make this worth watching again, even though it’s one to be endured as opposed to enjoyed. As a result, I’m grading “Out of My Mind” a low four out of ten.

[cyclica]

I was all set to leave comments on your review, but there seems little point since I'd just be saying 'agreed' to everything you said.

Like you I found this episode hard to watch, especially the cave scene, and I only watch it for harmony, and some good spike lines. Though I'm not ok with him suddenly being in love with buffy.

Still, I'm tempted to compare btvs with other shows, in which two characters can instantly fall in love with no setup at all, so by comparason having spike discover his feelings slowly isn't so bad. Even if there's no reason why he would fall in love with buffy to begin with.

I may lower my rating to a 4. Whenever I think back to this ep, all I remember is that every scene without harmony drags. The scenes you mentioned with dawn in the bedroom and the xanya friend conversation were ok, but if you hadn't have mentioned them, I wouldn't have remembered them.

[partcynic]

^ As we agree on almost everything, I have no extra commentary here. Just posting to let you know I'm reading.