5x02 Real Me
Written by David Fury
Directed by David Grossman
Original air date: October 3, 2000
Overall thoughts: I love the teaser of this episode so much! The first time I watched, I was really into Buffy's training session, and I felt that annoyance with Dawn sooo acutely. Hahahaha, it's great.
Dawn is adorable and I agree with
@Mylie that she feels so real and fleshed-out already. The scene with the mentally unhinged man is really disturbing, and that ending is so ominous. I love how that sense of unease/unreality mixes in with the teenage diary and normal life elements. (I just wish they had done something more believable with the ice cream scene, because there were so many ways they could have pulled that off.)
I also really enjoy the decision to go from Dracula to Harmony, total opposites when it comes to vampires.
Other stuff: I really feel bad for Tara's fear that she's a demon on rewatch! On first watch, I'm sure I had forgotten about the botched spell in S4 by now, so I'm not sure I even picked up on it.
I also enjoyed the contrast of Anya asking if she could trade her children for cash during the game of Life, but still running after Dawn when she went outside because Anya wanted to keep her safe.
I really love Mark Field's take on this episode, so I'm just going to quote it (from
his post on The Gift, because of his no-spoilers policy):
"Real Me opens with Buffy seeking her true self: 'GILES VOICEOVER: You are the center. And within you, there is the core of your being ... of what you are.' Buffy’s search is interrupted when Dawn interferes, knocking over the crystals and demanding to leave. In part, at least, Dawn is Buffy’s true self, the core of what she is.
"In Real Me, Dawn tells us about herself, but what she’s really telling us all along is about Buffy. That whole episode isn’t about Dawn at all; it’s about how Buffy’s human half sees the world. Think about this language from Dawn’s first voiceover (the first meaningful words we hear her say): 'Nobody knows who I am. Not the real me. It's like, nobody cares enough to find out. I mean, does anyone ever ask *me* what I want to do with my life?' That’s Buffy talking about herself.
"If you recall, I made a list of Dawn’s attributes in my post on Real Me. Here they are again: 'She keeps a diary. She loves Willow, she loves Xander, she loves her mother. She thinks Giles might not like her because he’s so old, she finds Buffy’s training boring, and she resents the fact that Buffy is always telling her what to do even if, in some sense, she idolizes her sister. She likes Tara, she’s not so sure about Anya. Interestingly, she expresses no opinion about Riley. She feels isolated at times, and she gets to be the child of the family in a way that Buffy wishes she could.'
"Just to tick off quickly the similarities, Buffy kept a diary when she was younger (Angel, Ted); Giles called Buffy to her Slayer destiny in Welcome to the Hellmouth and has pushed her ever since (From Nightmares: 'I should have been more c... cautious. Taken more time to train you. But you were so gifted. And the evil was so great.') As a result, he tends to have little patience for Buffy’s less adult moments ('I'm serious, Buffy, there's going to be far less time for the sort of flighty, frivolous-….' Real Me); Buffy has a mixed relationship with Anya (see, e.g., Superstar or Buffy v. Dracula); Riley is pretty self-explanatory at this point; Buffy’s sense of isolation is well-established; and the whole point of the season is that Buffy needs to overcome the belief that her human/child side is a hindrance to becoming an adult."
Not everything is an exact fit, but overall I think it works as a way of looking at this episode. To me, this idea that no one knows the "real" Buffy is great as a follow-up to Season 4, where we saw that none of Buffy's friends other than Tara recognized that Faith in Buffy's body wasn't Buffy and Buffy was upset by that. (It also fits then that Tara is also the most worried about Dawn. She's the one who pays the closest attention to Dawn and sees her the most clearly.)
I checked out the script online and there's nothing much to note this time.