Restless (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) - Analysis

Analysis

Each dream acts as a character study, exploring the fears and future of the dreamer. Willow, Xander, and Giles are stalked by a shadowy figure, then killed within their dreams. The way in which each is killed is directly related to the role they had assumed when melding with Buffy in the previous episode—that role is indicated by the Tarot-like card used to symbolize the character's essence. Willow's card had been Spiritus, representing her magical powers; she is killed by having her spirit sucked out of her. Xander's card had been Animus, representing his heart; he is killed by having his heart ripped out. Giles had been represented by the card Sophus, a symbol of his intellect and role as teacher; he is killed by being scalped. Buffy's card, Manus, was representative of her physical strength. In her dream the stalker is revealed as the primitive, first slayer, who confronts her aggressively. The two fight, but the First Slayer is defeated when Buffy realizes a key difference between them: the First Slayer was alone and isolated, while Buffy is unique among Slayers in that she has friends and a life beyond slaying, factors which make her the greatest Slayer ever.

In Willow's dream she struggles to find her place in the school theater production of Death of a Salesman, while her friends and classmates are apparently fully costumed, prepared, and ready to go on stage. Her confusion represents her lack of self-confidence, her fear that she still does not fit in or have a place in the world, unlike those around her, who are competent and know what is going on. She wears ordinary clothes, but the others repeatedly comment on the excellence of her "costume", a reference to her fear that her friends do not see what she has grown into, but rather what she was when younger: nerdy and awkward. This fear is confirmed when Buffy strips off her shirt and jeans, revealing the same unfashionable turtleneck and corduroy jumper she wore in episode one of the series, four years earlier, before her demon-fighting experiences and study of magic increased her confidence and competence. Willow stands anxiously at the front of the class, trying to read a paper, while her classmates express their boredom with listening to her and Oz whispers into Tara's ear, until she is attacked by the First Slayer and her breath is sucked out of her body.

Whedon stated that the maze of red curtains on the stage in Willow's dream are not a direct homage to Twin Peaks, as some have posited, but rather represent the safety and comfort of being with her girlfriend Tara, and are a sexual metaphor as well.

The main theme of Xander's dream is his sense of failure and of being left behind as his friends move ahead in life. His fear that he is stuck is reiterated throughout his dream by his inability to escape his basement bedroom in his parents' home. No matter where his dream takes him, he ends up back in the basement. As the only one of the Scoobies not in college, he feels anxiety about his ability to understand and keep up with ideas and conversations, a fear which is realized when he goes to the university, a place he already feels excluded from, and finds that he cannot understand what people say to him. Aware that he is being chased and is in danger, he asks Giles what is happening but cannot understand his answer, nor what Anya says to him, as they are both inexplicably speaking French. He exclaims, "I don't understand!" During his dream both Buffy and Willow tell him, "I'm way ahead of you," underscoring his fear that this is really the case.

Giles' dream presents a choice: either to remain a father figure and Watcher to Buffy, or to begin his own life, represented by the presence of his girlfriend Olivia, who pushes an empty baby stroller. During this part of his dream, Buffy is dressed as a child, with pigtails, and is unable to throw a ball straight without his help and instruction, an indication of his fear that she will be unable to do her job without his guidance. Later, Olivia is seen weeping, while the baby stroller has been overturned and abandoned, signifying elements of his unfulfilled life, such as marriage and children. Later, in The Bronze, he is explaining the reason they are all being stalked and attacked, performing his job as Watcher, but his singing this information represents his unfulfilled longing to be a musician, something he's been exploring privately throughout the season.

The major theme of Buffy's dream is her fear of the personal cost of her life as a Slayer, the isolation and loneliness she is forced to endure. This theme of aloneness is reiterated by several shots in which she is alone in the frame, most notably the wide shot of her in the vast and empty desert. Another source of anxiety is her relationship with her current boyfriend, Riley, whom she finds plotting world domination with Adam in his original, human, form. She fears what Riley could turn into as a result of his alliance with the military. She also fears the destabilizing effect of this alliance on their relationship, and the destabilizing effect of this relationship on her life as the slayer. She is shown putting mud on her face, mimicking the mud mask of the primal, First Slayer. By the end of her encounter in the desert with the First Slayer, Buffy realizes that she does not have to be entirely alone, that it is her closeness to friends and family that makes her a great Slayer, and once she experiences this revelation, the efforts of the First Slayer to continue to engage her in battle become fruitless and increasingly comical. The dream finally ends in a mundane way, as Buffy refuses to accept a tragic climax and instead insists on normality in her life.

All of the many elements in the dream sequences have meaning, with the exception of the Cheese Man. Whedon explains: "...the Cheese Man—meaningless. Why? Because I needed something in the show that was meaningless, because there is always something in the dream that doesn't make any sense at all. In this case it was the Cheese Man. He confounds everybody because of that, and people ascribe him meaning. This to me means that we're being successful, because this means they're not worried about everything else, which means they sort of did understand most other things."