Ok it's past midnight in Québec so here it goes...
Lessons
I love how the season arc already starts and the theme of the episode (lessons) and how it focuses on Buffy teaching Dawn about power. They are my favorite relationship on the show so any episode that focuses on them is interesting for me. I also love the back to basics feel with the return to high school.
The Willow/Giles scenes were good and worked on a thematic level, but they took me out of the story a bit.
Dawn was so precious and relatable. I loved her mini presentation in front of the class. We already see her showing leadership and being resourceful with the other kids and it feels like a sort of preview to Potential.
My favorite scene was the Buffy/Dawn scene in the cemetery. It’s cute and a moment I have been waiting for so long (Buffy taking Dawn patrolling) and it’s also thematic of the season (empowerment) and a natural progression of their relationship (given the way things ended in Grave). I absolutely loved the way Buffy handled Dawn’s first experience staking a vampire and telling her she also missed the heart her first time.
We also get to see Buffy struggle with letting Dawn handle herself. First in the cemetery she has no problem letting her defend herself, even letting her get caught and almost bitten. But later at school, she’s really struggling to let her go, doesn’t even leave the school grounds. This probably has to do with how nightmarish her high school experience on the Hellmouth was, but I also think that she’s fine with Dawn handling herself as long as it’s under her supervision. This episode also had more than one joke about Buffy being mistaken for a mother (one at the beginning with Principal Wood and one at the end with the kids in the basement). We see Buffy learn to let go through the episode, going as far as trying to convince Dawn to skip school, telling Wood that he should expel Dawn, barging in a classroom to tell Dawn that they have to leave the grounds, etc. At the end of the episode, despite seeing how right she was to worry about the supernatural stuff, she comes to terms with it and tells the kids that they’ll be alright as long as they’re careful. Perhaps she realized that there’s nothing they haven’t been able to handle, but I think she was reassured by Dawn calling her for help. Still, she does jump on the opportunity to work at the school and while this is certainly a good idea for the slayer, I think it’s also rooted in her wanting to be able to protect Dawn.
The last scene was amazing. I always get chills during The First’s montage. The whole thing is very effective, and I’m amazed that they were able to get all of those actors to come back for this. I also love the back to basics feel with the return to high school. And the master's back to the beginning feels like a meta comment (we’re going back to the high school setting) and of course The First evil.
Overall, this is a solid episode and I think it works really well as the final season’s opener.
I'm still working on my gifset and it will probably be done tomorrow.
I have also seen S7 the least of all the seasons and I know it the least. It's not a favorite of mine but I'm looking forward to a re-watch and seeing if any of my opinions change.
