Mallory Rubin

the alternate realities in their dreams in Restless also give us a sense of a shape of a different thing.

And then we parse that in that dream lens for meaning and clues about what might await.

So I just like when the show finds a way through the plot and mechanic of a given episode to tell us something about how people see themselves and how the world around them sees them.

I really love what you're saying about all the people in the season who want to be Buffy for two reasons.

One, I think it's really interesting that all of those examples that you gave, there's something different in it for each of them.

Riley, for example, he has his insecurities, of course, right?

We talked about that a little bit last pod, but

He really looks to Buffy as he is losing his grasp on, like, his sense of certainty and says, you understand what you're fighting for and why.

Like...

I envy that.

That's giving us something different from Kathy, who is like, I do plan to drop some blood down your throat and put a scorpion on you and to mentor suck your soul out of you so that I can run away from my demon dad and go to college.

Cool.

But all those different versions of it are playing out against...

the people who know Buffy best and who have admired her the longest, feeling further away from her than ever before.

As everyone else is trying to get closer and get a piece of her.

Like, I was so struck by, you know, again, we'll talk about the distance in the group many times today, but I was so struck in particular by the conversation between Tara and Willow about, like, rooms for sophomore year.

And...

Because there was just something almost so routine about the way Willow said.

Like, you know, I kind of always thought that Buffy and I would, like...

live together forever and now like we barely even see each other at all so there's like this kind of chase of and desire for proximity from other people as there's a very like organic and natural and sad um separation distance and separation from the people who have been closest for the longest so that felt again even in a just a classic buffy way the heightened supernatural circumstance like a very a rendering of something very true to life