The Body (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)

The Body (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)

"The Body" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of the fantasy television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). It was written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon and originally aired on the WB network in the United States on February 27, 2001. In the series, Buffy Summers is a teenager chosen by mystical forces and endowed with superhuman powers to defeat vampires, demons, and other evils in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She is supported in her struggles by a close circle of friends and family, nicknamed the Scooby Gang. In "The Body", Buffy is powerless as she comes upon her lifeless mother, who has died of a brain aneurysm.

Although Buffy and her friends deal with death every week, often in very gruesome and fantastic ways, in this episode they are bewildered by the natural death of Joyce Summers, the divorced mother of Buffy and her sister Dawn and occasionally a mother figure to their friends. They struggle to comprehend what the loss means to each of them and to the group. Buffy must begin to face her life and her duties as the Slayer without parental support and comfort.

The episode was stripped of all music—a regular staple of the Buffy series—and disorienting effects were included to convey the sense of displacement and loss associated with the death of a close family member. For its frank depiction of grief and coping with a very realistic death when the show usually used monsters or demons as figurative symbols, "The Body" has been described by multiple critics as one of the best television episodes ever broadcast.