Wednesday, June 30, 2010

TV Meme, Day 30: Saddest Character Death

This question puzzled me. Characters die on TV but often they’re guest stars or recurring characters, unless it’s Lost or 24 deaths don’t come that often. I have touched on two sad deaths over the months, Denny’s in Grey’s Anatomy and Rex’s in Desperate Housewives. It made me realise that what was sad was not the actual death but the reactions of the characters. I decided I’d focus on a character I’d never liked that much, but on what I consider to be one of the strongest representations of death in a television show.
            
The death in question was that of Joyce Summers in “The Body”; the show – Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
           
Buffy comes home one night to find her mother dead and the rest of the episode continues in a sombre, dismal tone. Whedon realises that death doesn’t always bring people together – it tears them apart and it’s seeing the reactions of the characters that make this episode less about Joyce’s death and more of death in general. I always remember Anya, a demon turned human, asking frantically “What am I supposed to do?”
What are we supposed to do when someone dies? Buffy just draws deeper into herself…
          
This is the last MEME post, I shall be back with a recap...but for now
"I'm free! We're free! We're free!"
Extra points if you know which play ends with that line.

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