Unexpected Comedy: 5 Funniest Buffy Episodes

We live in a
golden age of comedy. Every aspect of
the culture—print, internet, film and television, seems saturated with the
funny, or at least attempted comedy. Sounds good, of course, but it doesn’t always work out. If everything's
funny (or supposed to be) the shock's gone and the jokes are no longer jokes. In the immortal words of Ben Katz, the secret
of comedy is "location, location, location." I laugh harder and longer when the comedy is in an unexpected context,
or surrounded by something entirely unfunny. I'm talking real comedy, not the
nervous laughter produced when someone gets a fork in the eye or an idiot gets
humiliated. It's what happens when a nervous 7th-grader thinks he
has to spell "numbnuts" on national television. Location, location, location.

To me, the ability
to make comedy of scenarios and situations that others would treat with
po-faced seriousness is the ultimate achievement. By the way, according to
Merriam-Webster’s, the word po-faced is derived "perhaps from po chamber pot, toilet,
from French pot
pot." And that's what I'm trying to do in
this column: defeat the toilet-faces of the world. So, without further adieu, the first installment…

The Five Funniest Buffy, The Vampire Slayer Episodes

I came late to Buffy, and I'll admit that I never saw an episode of its original run on the WB and UPN. I had no resistance, but no real attraction either. My wife's collection of DVD's and her own fanaticism convinced me to give the show a serious try. It's hard to imagine a better example of the seamless intermingling of comic conceits, absurdist story lines and witty one-liners with compelling drama and character development. Plus, demons! Joss Whedon and his writers don't so much write jokes as invent language and motifs that are highly recognizable (even when totally phantasmagoric) yet completely fresh and original. If you've never seen Buffy, ignore the existence of the awful movie and put aside your prejudice about funny, horny and occasionally undead teenagers (and why exactly are you so damned prejudiced anyway?) and start with these five episodes, the funniest and probably also the greatest, according to me.

1.       The Zeppo (Season 3, Episode 13):

Looking at it now, Xander was the quintessential 90's guy, though not necessarily the archetype. That distinction would belong to his almost namesake, Chandler Bing.  Jokey, self-deprecating, sensitive, awkward, bad-childhood, defensive and only a fully-formed adult after grueling, protracted second adolescence. Throughout the series, Xander rebelled verbally against his comic foil status‚Äîdeclaring that he was not going to be Dracula's "butt-monkey" and that he was sick of getting the "funny syphilis"‚Äîbut in The Zeppo he stumbles into transcendence, conjuring up his true self years before he's ready to become that guy permanently. Xander scores a cool car, is tormented by un-dead greasers, loses his virginity to Faith and finally proves he's capable of something more than simple courage.  The comedy is not incidental as it often is in Buffy. "The Zeppo" is possibly the best illustration of Buffy's  greatness‚Äîapocalyptic panic mixed with teen comedy. Yet, many fans were baffled by the episode's "meta" choice to focus on Xander's attempts at becoming cool while Buffy, Giles and the rest of crew are fighting a apocalypse craving baddie trying to open up the hell-mouth. It's about Xander, of course, but it's about the show itself. All of the furrowed brows and whispered warnings about the Hellmouth are pompous hot-air without the wisecracks.  Xander isn't Zeppo Marx. He's Groucho.

2.       Beer Bad (Season 4, Episode 5):

Slayer spurned by player.  Even the strongest among us can moon over a pretty face and rebound into the arms of apparently genius frat boys (including Kal Penn) bearing pitchers of beer. Beer‚Äînice, foamy, comforting. Until it turns you into a cave-slayer, along with your newly minted cavemen friends.   It would be easy to have made Buffy into nothing but a model of female strength‚Äîa robotic, humorless, perfect fighting machine.  Joss Whedon knew that's a narrative dead end, as boring as it is ludicrous.  No one doubts a girl can save the world, but this guy Parker was so damn yummy. I mean come on.   It's also easy to miss, or at least forget, how incredible Sarah Michelle Gellar is in the role. If she played it a shade dumber, as Kristi Swanson did in the movie, it's just a stupid joke.  If she's less vulnerable, or funny, or relatable, she's just a male action hero sans testicles.  She' s a girl and without her we'd all be eaten by baddies.

The moral of the episode is summed up nicely in this bit of dialogue between Xander and Buffy:

"Is there a lesson to all this? What did we learn about beer?"

"Foamy!"

"Good, as long as that's clear."

Beer foamy, guys bad.  Take that, with your Nietzsche and your Wittgenstein.

3.       Dracula Vs. Buffy (Season 5, Episode 1):

It took four full seasons before Joss Whedon and company got around to bringing the big guy into the BTVS mix and they did so with an apropos exchange between the Slayer and the Impaler.

"Who are you?"

"I apologize. I assumed you knew. I am Dracula".

"Get out! So let me get this straight. You're… 'Dracula.' The guy. The Count."

"I am."

"And you're sure this isn't just some fanboy thing? Because… I've fought more than a couple of pimply overweight vamps that called themselves Lestat."

The rest of the episode takes an equally breezy attitude towards "the Dark Master (bater)," as Xander calls him after coming under his thrall. The writers don't bother to deconstruct the idea of Dracula; they just don't let his somber melodrama weigh down the story. Like Xander, writers of vampire stories are sick of being the Dark Master (bater)'s butt monkey.

4.       Band Candy (Season 3, Episode 6):

Giles is my favorite character in Buffy, or it's just possible in my increasing and inevitable oldness he's simply the one I'm most resemble. I think narcissistic identification is possibly the most unheralded and important factor in the building of the Western Canon, which is the reason we are forced to accept a hundred novels about old ladies touring Europe as "universal" works of art.  Or stories about a young man's first hunt and what it reveals about the darkness of the soul.  And why I think that Giles is the best character in Buffy, which is ridiculous if you realize how amazingly nuanced Buffy is as both a heroine and human, or the originality of Willow's quirky grace. Not to mention that if I started to watch the show when it premiered eleven years ago, Xander would have been my touchstone, though I was always willing to see myself in the jokey ones even if we had little else in common. But the humor of the Giles is not to be underestimated, though it can easily be missed. His character itself is a comic conceit, though one played entirely straight.

In Band Candy‚Äîthe title has to be a nod to Allyson Hannigan's role in American Pie(Ed note: As the Internet has kindly pointed out, BC aired a year before AP's release. Our bad.)‚Äîthe adults of Sunnydale are being turned into teenagers by insidious candy bars, which is just an excuse for a role reversal comedy, and the unleashing of Giles' former self and alter ego, The Ripper. In his youth, Giles tore it up and in this episode he reverts back, famously tearing up Buffy's mom on the hood of a cop car.  The focus of the comedy is in the reactions of the real teenagers as the adults Gregor Samsa into bratty, dim-witted partiers. The Ripper is not necessarily Giles at his funniest. His dry asides make me laugh harder and more frequently as they are interspersed through the series, but I'm not sure anything's drier the mumble Giles gives when Buffy congratulates him and her mom for not going too far in their temporary teenage riot.

5.       Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: (Season 2, Episode 16):

Xander  tries to get a witch to cast a love spell  (from "The Great Roofie Spirit") over Cordelia, the out of his league hottie who broke up with him on Valentine's Day because he was killing her social status, and it back fires. The spell backfires in what seems to be the most awesome way imaginable. Every female in Sunnydale, moms and teachers included become insanely attracted to Xander, who quickly becomes overwhelmed and endangered by all of the panting at his expense. The episode perfectly illustrates the pattern of the more directly comic episodes of Buffy. Start with a conflict, play serious for the first half of the show and then let the comedy overtake everything else in the second half. It takes a fairly obvious premise‚Äî"careful what you wish for"‚Äîand takes it to its most extreme result.  In a show like Buffy, there is no such thing as a clich√©. It's what they do with the clich√© that matters.