Background
Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is assisted from season one by her close friends, who collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang: Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), whose primary strength is his devotion to Buffy, and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), who begins dabbling in witchcraft and grows progressively more powerful. They are mentored by Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Buffy's "Watcher", and joined by Xander's girlfriend Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield), who was a vengeance demon until her powers were taken away. Anya is often at a loss to know how to communicate with humans, and her speech is frequently abrupt. In the fourth season, Willow became romantically involved with Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), also a witch.
Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) presents an overall theme episodes tie into. Scholar Roz Kaveney identifies family and belonging as the overall theme of the fifth season. Buffy's mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) begins experiencing headaches at the beginning of the season, once collapsing and requiring hospitalization. She subsequently has a brain tumor removed. She has been recovering well. In the previous episode, she receives flowers from a male suitor, which Buffy finds at the end of that episode. The fifth season also introduces Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), Buffy's 14-year-old sister. Each season has a primary antagonist called the Big Bad; in the fifth season this takes the form of a powerful goddess named Glory.
Read more about this topic: The Body (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
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