Dead Man's Party (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Plot

Buffy Summers has returned to Sunnydale, but her homecoming is far from smooth. The atmosphere between her and her mother, Joyce, is strained, a tension Joyce inadvertently heightens by hanging a Nigerian mask gifted by a friend from a gallery. At Giles’s apartment, Buffy deflects her friends’ questions about her summer, while Giles quietly conceals his own relief that she is back.

The following day, Joyce takes Buffy to see Principal Snyder, who takes a mean-spirited delight in refusing to overturn her expulsion. Buffy also encounters Pat, a grating member of Joyce’s book club, who makes pointed remarks about Buffy’s behavior and its effect on her mother. Later, Buffy discovers a dead cat in the basement and buries it in the garden.

That night, the mask’s eyes begin to glow red, and the cat claws its way back from the grave, reanimated. The sight shocks both Buffy and Joyce. Giles arrives to collect the creature for study, notices the mask, but is forced to remind Buffy she is banned from school grounds. At school, Buffy’s friends decide to throw her a party, and their chatter distracts Giles from a page depicting the very mask.

Overwhelmed by the noisy celebration, Buffy struggles to connect with Willow. She then overhears Joyce confiding to Pat about how difficult Buffy’s return has been. Feeling alienated by her friends’ coldness and her school troubles, Buffy concludes she made a mistake coming home and begins packing.

In the library, Giles is horrified by what he uncovers about the mask. He tries to call Buffy, but partygoers fail to pass along the message. While driving to her house, Giles hits a man in the road.

When he gets out, he finds the man is a reanimated zombie. Giles barely escapes as corpses rise all over Sunnydale, all irresistibly drawn toward Joyce’s mask. Willow finds Buffy packing and angrily confronts her, listing all the pain and worry she caused, pointing out that the Scoobies also faced difficult times. Buffy and Joyce argue in the middle of the party, with Xander taking Joyce’s side while Oz attempts to calm things.

As the fight escalates, the revenants crash through windows and doors, forcing everyone—including Joyce, who grabs a weapon—to stop arguing and fight together. Several guests are killed. In the bedroom, Willow checks Pat’s pulse and finds she is dead.

Themes

Essayist Emily of the site InsectReflection.com discusses friendship, friendship done wrongly, and blame. She singles out Anthony Steward Head's microexpressions, noting he conveys depth of emotion with no words and is the only sympathetic and sympathizing character here. She writes that the central purpose of "Dead Man's Party" is to bring the main cast back together and tie up emotional loose threads from the previous season. She concludes that it is difficult to sympathise with the Scoobies' point of view when the episode itself has no interest in it.

Reception

Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery described "Dead Man's Party" as one of the most uncomfortable episodes of the series, writing that the zombies represent the group's failed attempts to bury their anger at Buffy, and that they only achieve a partial catharsis by fighting alongside her. They quote Xander who says "you can't just bury stuff, Buffy, it will come right back to get you". Vox ranked it at #47 of all 144 episodes on their "Every Episode Ranked From Worst to Best" list, writing that it always hurts when the Scoobies fight but it is also always fantastic television, with characters so well-defined that each point of view is clear.

Myles McNutt writes that it is the sort of episode meant to be unpleasant, as characters hide their emotions and it leads to a charged confrontation, and he likes the darkness of the concept but would have preferred not dealing with a silly Nigerian Zombie mask at the same time. Reviewer Billie Doux gives a rating of 3 out of 4 stakes and points out that the zombies and the Ovu Mobani Evil Eye demon/mask thing are a transparent metaphor for Buffy's situation, with buried stuff coming up and masks hiding what we feel.

Roger Pocock writes that the fantasy element is by far the least interesting aspect, and that the emotional conflict is the really interesting aspect. Mike Loschiavo suggests that the episode is rather slow, like its zombies, but beneficially, showing an oft-overlooked issue: consequences.