Once More with Feeling

I t was important for Whedon to give Once More, with Feeling thematic resonance in context with the rest of the season, in comparison to traditional 'special musical episodes' of TV, which have little reason for characters to break into song. We're taking you outside the world of television. We're better than the world of television. I love what you can do with it. And to be able to go this far emotionally, and be this silly on a regular old episode of television is a way of saying, 'This is just an episode. This is just what we do.

It's not better, it's just TV in all its glory. O nce More, with Feeling ultimately builds to a devastating crescendo, with Buffy revealing through song that she wasn't rescued from a hell dimension by her friends at the start of season six after all. I was going to let someone else do the singing, because I don't like to do something unless I can really do it.

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Then I read the script and realized what a huge arc it was for my character and went and made the decision that I did not have a choice. The episode Gone, which sees Buffy vanishing after an incident with an invisibility ray, was specifically written to give Gellar a break.

As a result, Hannigan sings just two lines in the musical, including the knowing lyric, "I think this line's mostly filler. For him to tell her once and for all, 'Just leave me alone. Believe me, as a fellow who's had many restraining orders in his time: I don't need you. And that's just the truth of it. And then, that he would save her. That he would be the person who would bring her the message of hope. Still, those are the two things that would get them to the smoochy place. And where they will inevitably end up, because this is a musical, and if it doesn't end with a kiss I'm doing something wrong.

W hile retro curtains close in on said kiss, the cast plead into the credits, "Where do we go from here? As it turned out, it went somewhere messy We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Since Tara has no recollection of an argument, she suspects that Willow has used magic to alter her memory. She goes to the Magic Box to consult a book, leaving Dawn alone.

Dawn starts to bemoan that no one seems to notice her "Dawn's Lament" , but is soon seized by minions of Sweet Hinton Battle , a zoot suit -wearing, tap-dancing, singing demon. They take Dawn to The Bronze, where her attempt to escape transforms into an interpretive dance with the minions "Dawn's Ballet" before she meets Sweet. He tells Dawn that he has come to Sunnydale in response to her "invocation", and he will take her to his dimension to make her his bride "What You Feel" when his visit is complete.

At the Magic Box, Giles recognizes that he must stand aside if Buffy is to face her responsibilities in caring for Dawn instead of relying on him "Standing" and Tara finds a picture of the forget-me-not flower Willow used to cast a spell on her in a book of magic. Giles forbids the gang to assist Buffy, so she goes alone, despite having no will to do so; eventually Giles and the Scoobies change their minds and leave to catch up. Although Spike initially thinks that things would be better for him if Buffy was dead, he also changes his mind and decides to help Buffy; Sweet opines that Buffy is drawn to danger "Walk Through the Fire".

When asked by Sweet what she thinks about life, Buffy gives her pessimistic take on its meaning "Something to Sing About".

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Xander then reveals that he, not Dawn, called Sweet, hoping he would be shown a happy ending for his marriage plans. The Scoobies realize that their relationships have been changed irreversibly by the secrets revealed in their songs "Where Do We Go from Here?

Spike leaves The Bronze, but Buffy follows him out, and they kiss "Coda". Joss Whedon had wanted to make a musical episode since the start of the series.



1. More by Sarah Michelle Gellar.
2. SNOW WHITE SUBMITS;
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This was heightened during the fifth season when he hosted a Shakespeare reading at his house, to which the cast was invited. They began drinking and singing, demonstrating to Whedon that certain cast members had musical talents. During the first three seasons of Buffy , he was unable to take more than two weeks off at a time, and the constraints of writing and directing the show precluded him from putting forth the effort of preparing a musical.

Whedon spoke to the show's producer, Gareth Davies , about his idea; they agreed that a musical episode would be written. Whedon spent six months writing the music for "Once More, with Feeling". And they don't play piano very well. The songs sounded really cheesy and horrible We were saying, 'Joss, you're ruining our careers. Preparing for the episode was physically difficult for some of the cast members, most of whom had little experience singing and dancing.

They spent three months in voice training. Michelle Trachtenberg Dawn , who is trained in ballet, requested a dance sequence in lieu of a significant singing part, [9] and Alyson Hannigan Willow , according to Whedon, begged him not to give her many lines. And I never want to do it again.

Battle, a three-time Tony-winner, wore prosthetic make-up for the first time to give him a demonic red face. Sweet was portrayed as "slick", smooth and stylish; in contrast, most demons on the series were designed to be crude and ugly. Running eight minutes longer than any in the series, [note 2] the episode was also the most technical and complex.

Whedon, who has stated this is one of his favorite Buffy episodes, used a widescreen letterbox format for filming the only episode in the series to get this treatment , [12] different lighting to bring out the sets more vibrantly, and long takes for shooting—including a complicated shot with a full conversation, a song, and two choreographed dances that took 21 attempts to get right.

Once More, with Feeling

These were designed to give viewers all the clues they needed to establish all the nuances of the relationships between characters. Network president Dean Valentine remarked he thought it was "one of the best episodes of television I ever saw in my life". Critics hailed the episode as successful in telling a complex story about all the characters in a unique way, while retaining the series' effective elements of writing and character development.

Throughout the show—as in the rest of the series—the characters self-consciously address their own dialogue and actions. Anya describes her own duet "I'll Never Tell" as "a retro pastiche that's never gonna be a breakaway pop hit". With a characteristic dry demeanor, Giles explains that he overheard the information about Sunnydale residents spontaneously combusting as he was eavesdropping upon the police taking "witness arias".

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The song introduces the character's emotional state but also removes the barrier between the actor and the audience, as Gellar the actor portrays Buffy, who feels she is merely playing the part of the Slayer. This hints to the audience that the episode's musical format is strange to the actors and characters. Rhonda Wilcox, [17]. The dynamic nature of the characters was a unique element of writing in the series at the time.

Once they were established in the twelve episodes of the first season, characters began to change and relationships were developed in the second. This continued through the series to the point of unpredictability that sometimes became unsettling to fans. Buffy continues her charade in the chorus number "If We're Together", beginning the song by persuading others to join in one by one, as if each is convinced that she is still invested and in charge, and their strength as a group is infallible.

Secrets reveal themselves steadily throughout the episode. Xander fears that his future marriage will turn him into an argumentative drunk like his father. He attempts to avoid his fears through the song "I'll Never Tell", singing "'coz there's nothing to tell", after summoning Sweet to Sunnydale to show him that he and Anya will be happy. Amid the various annoyances Xander and Anya express through this song, some verses are clear-sighted observations of behavior, such as Anya's accusation that Xander—once in love with Buffy—uses Buffy as a mother figure to hide behind.

Anya and Xander's duet is the only song in the episode to address the audience directly. During the long single-shot scene when she and Xander talk over each other insisting to Giles that evil must be at play, Anya refers to the audience, saying "It was like we were being watched Like there was a wall missing Like there were only three walls and not a fourth wall.

Giles' truth, according to Whedon, is that he realizes he must not "fight my kid's battles or my kid will never grow up", [9] which he sings in "Standing" while he throws knives at Buffy as part of her training. Whedon remarked that this touch "is the kind of complete turnaround that is a staple of the Buffy universe".

Although "Once More, with Feeling" allows all the characters to confess truthfully, with the exception of Willow, it does not resolve the behavior that demanded confession in the first place.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling (サウンドトラック) by Sarah Michelle Gellar on Spotify

At the end of the episode, Buffy kisses Spike, initiating a romance that she hides from her friends. Their relationship lasts until the end of the series, marked for a time by Buffy's loathing of him because he has no soul. Her relationship with Spike, however, allows her to feel lust and attraction, which she yearns for after being pulled back from a heavenly dimension. In earlier seasons, this takes the form of simpler pleasures such as dating and socializing, interspersed with defeating evil forces.

It reaches a climax in the ultimate sacrifice when Buffy offers to die to save the world. However, "Once More, with Feeling", according to Stroud, is the turning point at which she begins to face her responsibility to the community, her friends and her family. Not only does she continue her Slaying despite a lack of inspiration, but for the rest of the season she works at a humiliating job to provide for her sister and friends.

He learned how to play guitar to write several songs. Christophe Beck , a regular composer for the series, filled in the overture and coda and composed "Dawn's Ballet". Whedon is a fan of Stephen Sondheim , and used him as the inspiration for much of the music, particularly with the episode's ambiguous ending. Maybe it's a Beatles thing. He doesn't know enough to know what he can't do and he's smashing rules. The episode's musical style varies significantly. Whedon wanted to use a similar opening in which the heroine explains her yearning.

While singing her song, Buffy fights three vampires and a demon who themselves break into a choreographed dance; Whedon wanted this to be fun but not distracting. The song ends with chord influences from Stephen Schwartz's Pippin and a visual tribute to Disney: Whedon chose the most complicated scene, with the most dancers and choreography in the classic style of musical theater, to accompany an second song "The Mustard" "to get it out of the way" for more personal numbers later in the episode.

Whedon assigned Emma Caulfield the rock-opera format because Caulfield often sang in such a way to him on the set. Xander and Anya's duet—the most fun to shoot but difficult to write, according to Whedon [6] —is inspired by Fred Astaire - Ginger Rogers comedies as evidenced by the silken pajama costumes and art deco apartment setting.

The best Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes: the story behind Once More, with Feeling

Buffy's not hearing his song was intentional; Whedon explained, "You can sing to someone in musicals and they can never know how you feel or how much you love them, even if they're standing right in front of you". Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show in U. Buffy essayist Ian Shuttleworth writes that Amber Benson Tara has "the sweetest singing voice of all the lead players", referring to "Under Your Spell" as "heavenly and salacious"; author Nikki Stafford concurs, writing that Benson "has the most stunning voice, showing a surprising range".

He considers this an example of Tara's quieter strength coming out in front of Willow's showy demonstrations of powerful magic. The most complicated song, "Walk Through the Fire", leads all the characters to the climax from different locations for different reasons, reminiscent of the " Tonight Quintet " from West Side Story.

Buffy - Once More, with Feeling - I've Got a Theory / Bunnies / If We're Together

Whedon called the shot the "single greatest thing we ever did". Buffy's numbers are the most complex, changing key and tempo when she begins to reveal the secrets she swore she never would. Whedon attempted to make the song tuneful yet chaotic to express the main point of the episode.

The couples in the group wear opposite colors Giles in green and Buffy in red, Anya in blue and Xander in orange, Tara in yellow and Willow in purple , and Rhonda Wilcox interprets the color-coding and choreography to represent the "tension between the individual and the group". As Spike and Buffy kiss, a swell of music accompanies them, similar to the ending of Gone with the Wind. Lyrics sung moments before, however, forecast the uncertainty of the relationship between Spike and Buffy, as well as their contrasting reasons for initiating any romance; Spike wants to feel love from Buffy, while she simply wants to feel.

This placed the episode in sixth place in its timeslot, and 88th among broadcast television for the week of November 5—11, It was the most watched program on UPN that night, and the third most watched program that week, trailing episodes of Star Trek: Writers agree that the episode was risky and could have failed spectacularly.



Rather than adopt the 'Hey, wouldn't it be wacky if we suddenly burst into song? Quite simply, television at its best. NATAS attempted to remedy this by mailing a postcard informing its voters that it should be included, but the episode did not win. NATAS' oversight, according to the Washington Post , was "another example of the lack of industry respect afforded one of television's most consistently clever shows".

Nothing here is real; nothing here is right. Buffy the Vampire Slayer' s musical episode, 'Once More, with Feeling', registers a paltry outstanding music direction nomination. Nice for the musical directors. An album including all 14 songs in the episode, with Christophe Beck's scores for three other Buffy episodes, was released by Rounder Records in September as season seven premiered.

John Virant, president and chief executive of Rounder Records, told the Los Angeles Times , "I remember watching the episode when it aired last October, and after it was over, I said to my wife, 'That's the best hour of TV I've ever seen. Someone should put that [soundtrack] out. If you want to take a run at it, feel free. Reviewer Melinda Hill states it is "a must-have for Buffy fans, but it wouldn't be out of place in anyone's collection".

In addition to featuring on the sixth season box set, "Once More, with Feeling" was individually released on DVD in Region 2 format on April 14, , [64] the only episode to be individually released. Since the musical episode of Buffy aired, several other series have worked musical format into episodes, including Scrubs , " My Musical " in , [67] an episode of Grey's Anatomy entitled " Song Beneath the Song " in [68] and Batman: