Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, Episodes 21 and 22: Becoming
Written and Directed by Joss Whedon(a.k.a. In Which Buffy Learns That The Slayer Is Always Alone)
Unlike the other two two-parters of the season, Joss Whedon wrote and directed both parts of Becoming, and the result is that the two gel together much better, seeming like one big story rather than Part One merely being a "setup" episode. In many ways, this is probably the finest season finale in all of the show's seven seasons. Okay, so Restless has that bizarre David Lynch-inspired dream logic, and The Gift has its overwhelming sense of inevitability, but from a storytelling standpoint, Becoming is about as good as it gets.
I never swooned over the Buffy/Angel relationship with girlish glee in the way that so many fans did (I think the two are more interesting when they're apart), but it's undeniable that their final scene together is powerful. I also wish, in many ways, that they'd let Angel stay dead instead of bringing him back again (with little explanation) almost as soon as the third season had begun. Of course, if that had happened, we would never have had the spin-off, but at least in the short term it hurt that particular plotline, and also made it difficult to see any of the deaths that occurred in the Buffyverse as in any way permanent. In the context of Becoming, though, Buffy's post re-ensoulment killing of Angel works brilliantly.
Incidentally, I thought the narration was by Seth Green at first, but now I realise that it's guest star Max Perlich, in the role of Angel's sort-of mentor, Whistler (who, incidentally, would have appeared in the Angel series in the role that eventually went to Glenn Quinn, had the actor not been unavailable).
Oh yeah, and if vampires don't breathe, how can Spike knock Drusilla out by choking her?
Overall rating: 10/10 for both parts.
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