Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 

 

Hush: Season 4, Episode 10, Written by: Joss Whedon

 

                This episode starts out with Buffy Summers napping in class, and while she is sleeping, she has a prophetic dream. In the dream she sees a little girl holding a weirdly- designed box.  The girl was singing a strange rhyme about creatures known as “The Gentlemen.” Startled, Buffy calls her mentor, Giles, who says he will look into it. But he did not get started soon enough and that night, while everyone is asleep, these Gentlemen begin wandering through town sending out white wisps that float through the atmosphere, jumping from person to person. In the morning, Buffy wakes up and goes about her normal business, but when she tries to talk to her friend, Willow, she realizes that neither of them can speak! Distressed, they run outside and discover that no one can talk! Buffy and Willow race to Giles’s house to see if he knows what is happening.  Giles makes the assumption that it has to do with the Gentlemen Buffy dreamt of. The next night, the Gentlemen return, but this time they are not stealing voices, they are stealing hearts. This is the missing clue Giles needs.  With it, he discovers the plan of The Gentlemen -- they are gathering seven hearts to complete a ritual, and they take away voices so that no one can hear the screams of the victims. Giles finds out that the way to defeat he Gentlemen is for them to hear a human scream. The next night Buffy decides to follow one of The Gentlemen to the lair where the voices are kept in the weirdly designed box. She fights her way through all of the Gentlemen to get to the box, and when she finally gets there, Buffy smashes the box into bits. When Buffy smashes the box her voice returns, and when her voice returns she screams until the Gentlemen explode.

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Comments:

- This episode is awesome! The fact that they don’t talk in this episode reveals two things about the show:  first, the acting in this show is incredible and second, the show is awesome even without dialogue!

 

-This episode might sound familiar.  That’s because it is based on a Grimm fairy tale.  I like how Joss Whedon, the director, wanted to do this episode so much that he made the effort to find the perfect story in which it made sense to have no dialogue.  Otherwise, it could have been gimmicky.

 

-  In the Grimm fairy tale the scream that saves the day comes from a princess.  In this episode, it is Buffy’s scream that saves the day.  Joss Whedon is making clear his belief that women have the power to save the day.