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Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Hush
UPN Episode Air Date 12/11/01"Hush" is the lone Emmy-nominated episode of Buffy. As a favor to those of us who missed it the first time, UPN replayed it last night.
When the episode originally aired, Buffy was in her first semester at UC Sunnydale, balancing college life, romance (though she had not yet hooked up with Riley), and slayage. Willow was just getting into Tara and magic, and Xander and Anya were still exploring the awkward stages of a budding romance. Spike is still unable to be evil, but not quite comfortable as one of the Scooby gang. And Giles has a sleepover guest (the essentially one-shot Olivia).
After one of Buffy's prophetic dreams, the voices of Sunnydale mysteriously disappear overnight. As Giles and the Scooby gang try to solve this mystery, a group of very creepy looking demons (with accompanying flunkies in straight jackets) strolls through Sunnydale at night shopping for hearts.
The Scoobs fumble around with no voices and poor lipreading skills, resulting in all sorts of chaos. The rest of the world believes the town has a laryngitis epidemic, causing quarantine of Sunnydale.
Giles cleverly puts together a whole multi-media presentation to clear things up. The creepy men are fairy tale monsters that steal hearts, and not in a James Marsters Spiky way. The story goes that these creepy floating guys, known as The Gentlemen, arrive in a town, remove everyone's voices so that no one can call out for help, and cut out seven hearts. All very politely, of course.
As the fairy tale goes, only a princess' scream can kill The Gentlemen.
The Scooby Gang fights the creepies and makes life in Sunnydale more talkative, all without actually talking themselves. In the absence of the witty dialogue viewers have come to love, the cast has to be witty in other ways. For instance, Xander mistakes Willow's mime of the word "heart" as "female breasts." Of course the episode was extremely well acted and directed - it would have to be to communicate anything to the audience.
While keeping the audience entertained Joss Whedon and his gang of writers snuck in a few key points that contributed to future (now past) storylines. This is the episode where Buffy and Riley share their first kiss, Xander first realizes and expresses (kind of) his love for Anya, Willow and Tara first notice and get to know each other, Giles's mystery girlfriend is seen (only to go back to being a mystery), and Buffy and Riley discover the other can kick some demon butt.
"Hush" gave new viewers a little history on the Sunnydale sleuths. However, novice viewers may be a little confused with the new (old) faces in this episode. To them we say seasons one through four are shown on FX twice daily. Catch Up!
