Okay, I feel I kinda need to defend Joyce here from all your little exclamative rants haha.
one thing i REALLY don't like about this ep is the fact that Joyce tells Giles that she blames him for buffy doing a runner. i mean COME ON! she was the one who couldn't handle the 'big secret' and told Buffy that if she left the house 'don't even think about coming back'
what teenager would go back after her mother told her that?! to pass the blame onto Giles, when she still doesn't really understand the relationshiop between the Englaish man and her daughter is just wrong.
She doesn't blame him for Buffy running away. She blames him for being the cause of Buffy running away. If he hadn't (in Joyce's view) made her be the Slayer, sent her to fight dangerous things every night, she wouldn't have fallen into all this scary stuff and so wouldn't have reached the point where she needed to run away.
Plus, when she said 'If you leave this house don't come back', that wasn't literal. It was that famed Mom-Speak. High Drama, High Point and basically means 'I'm pulling rank, now do what I say young lady'. What person hasn't had their parent do something like that? They never really mean it. It's just a heat of the moment thing. And I never thought it was why Buffy ran away. She ran away because she wanted to run from what had happened to Angel, what she had done to Angel, the hurt and pain it had caused her friends and she didn't want to face her Mom because she felt she had let her down. Buffy's running theme throughout season 3 was 'Mom, I wish I could be normal for you' until Graduation where Joyce tells her not to be so silly basically.
And true, she didn't yet know the relationship between Giles and Buffy, she just knew the basics. Which is exactly why she was
able to blame him. If she had known the true depth of the two's relationship she would have realized his Fatherly role so wouldn't have been able to openly blame him, she perhaps would have been a lot more sharing in their loss, as it was essentially the same.
Yeah I think maybe Joyce should have appoligised to Giles about that she was way out of line
They do try to make nice in Dead Man's Party. The both of them do. Discussing the mask (and other forms of art if Buffy hadn't interrupted them) was the two of them trying to make up so to speak. The two aren't ones for open apologies, neither of them, and that was their way.
As for her being out of line, the very first time I saw it I did think that but now I think she's just totally in her right. Buffy is her daughter- it is considered the ultimate bond. And Giles has had this parental relationship with her behind Joyce's back for two years, neither ever telling her. He saw and understood Buffy at that time more than Joyce did. He knew what was going on in her life, she shared things with him that she never shared with Joyce unless she had to absolutely had to. (The whole Angel/Sleeping with Angel thing for example). In her overwhelming worry over her missing daughter (a situation which she views, since Giles is the one holding the Slayer handbook so to speak, he has to be a least partially responsible for) she attacks him. Her sorrow turns to anger really. She is essentially going all Mother Hen mode and really trying to overcome her own worry, loss, sorrow and guilt ('I just wish I could talk to her. The last thing we did was fight')
I just feel very strongly about her mini-speech. Makes me teary. Don't know whether it's the new Mom factor that makes me this way in an extreme defendery way, but I always felt sympathetic to Joyce in this scene and at this point in the series in general.
