Once More, with Feeling (Buffy episode)

"Once More, with Feeling" is a musical episode of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was written and directed by Joss Whedon, the creator of the show. The lyrics and music were also written by Whedon, with a score by Christophe Beck and arrangements by Beck and Jesse Tobias.

Plot synopsis

After an overture with some wordless scenes of Buffy and her friends taken from a normal day (simply named "Overture"), we see Buffy patrolling in a cemetery at night, but there is something wrong with her and with the demons she meets and kills: they are all singing and dancing. Buffy sings "Going Through the Motions" about her life after returning to Earth, and the way she feels detached from it.

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The morning after, Buffy asks her friends if the same thing had happened to them, and it turns out it has. They suddenly burst into song again, first wondering what can possibly be the cause for this ("I've Got A Theory"), then, guided by Buffy, reasserting their ability to deal with it together ("If We're Together"). This group song is notable for reenforcing Anya's fear of bunnies, as she blames the singing on them ("Bunnies", a short heavy metal section inside "I've Got A Theory"). It seems that all the people in Sunnydale are forced to sing about their inner feelings, including a man praising his dry-cleaning as Buffy peeks out onto the street from the Magic Box, trying to figure out if they are the only ones affected ("The Mustard") and a woman that Giles, Xander and Anya later pass by, who pleads with a police officer about the parking ticket he is giving her (aptly, "The Parking Ticket").

Related Topics:
Anya - Sunnydale

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Later Xander and Anya sing together about things they would otherwise have never told themselves or each other, namely their fears about their coming marriage ("I'll Never Tell"), Tara sings a love song to Willow about the difference she's made in her life ("Under Your Spell") and Spike sings to Buffy about the tortuous nature of their relationship ("Rest In Peace").

Related Topics:
Xander - Tara - Willow - Spike

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In the meantime, Giles realizes that his continued presence encourages Buffy to remain emotionally dependent on him and thus, ironically, prevents her from recovering emotionally from the trauma of her death and resurrection; deciding that he should no longer act as a father to her lest she never mature, he decides to leave again and return to England for good ("Standing"). Tara finds out about a forgetting spell Willow had cast some days before to make her forget about a fight they had, and decides to break up with her. The two duet about it as they look at at Buffy and Willow respectively, the two of whom are distractedly chatting ("Under Your Spell/Standing (Reprise)").

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It seems that there is a new demon in town, Sweet, and he is responsible for all the singing. Unfortunately, some people are singing and dancing so much that they start burning from the inside, and end up dying in flames.

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The demon has Dawn kidnapped by his minions as she laments the way her life is ("Dawn's Lament") and taken to the Bronze ("Dawn's Ballet"), as he thinks she is the one who summoned him, and intends to take her to the Underworld and make her his queen ("What You Feel").

Related Topics:
Dawn - The Bronze - Underworld

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Discovering this through one of Sweet's minions, Buffy and the gang head there to fight him, Buffy once again singing about her inability to feel, as the gang expresses its wish to fight along with her, accompanied by Sweet, who summons them in song ("Walk Through The Fire"). Arriving, Buffy starts to sing and dance defiantly, again expressing her current condition and the hardships of being the Slayer, when she finally reveals to Sweet and her friends that when, by resurrecting her, they had pulled her out of Heaven and not out of a hell dimension as they thought. Then, just when she is close to dancing to the point of burning, in a somewhat suicidal effort, Spike arrives and helps her recover ("Something to Sing About").

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Eventually, it turns out that Dawn is not the one who had summoned the demon, but Xander, who had not understood the implications, leading to the demon giving up on the queen matter and just vanishing away, telling the group to say their thoughts, "once more with feeling" ("What You Feel (Reprise)"), which they do, questioning what to do next ("Where Do We Go From Here?'").

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The episode ends with Spike and Buffy kissing, as the curtains fall, as predicted in the previous song as the chorus swells one last time ("Coda").

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