Episode 11: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The invisible girl show, the one Joss says reflects his high school experience--he claims he sat in class once and watched his hand disappear. The premise is simple: everyone ignores girl, girl becomes invisible, then psychotic and tries to uglify Cordy.

The parallel is Buffy. In her old school, she was Cordelia. All the fuss about May Queen should have been hers, in theory--and it was clear that she would have been welcomed by that clique has she not chosen Willow, Xander and the Slayer package. Buffy is feeling invisible at the same time Cordy is the Queen Bee.

To top it off, Buffy is unusually aware that she is still new, still outside of the Xander/Willow friendship. Some random comment sends them into gales of giggles, and they can't explain the Buffy what was so funny about a 5th grade field trip, then Xander invites Willow for dinner; Willow's response makes it clear that she's has a history with Xander's family. Both seemingly throw-away lines, transitions from one important point to another--and both underlining that in significant ways, Buffy is alone.

Strikingly, even the climax of the story has Willow and Xander with Giles while Buffy is battling alone to save herself and Cordelia. They are together at the end, all's well in Sunnydale, but the specter of isolation floats in the background. In later seasons, when Buffy doesn't tell them things that they probably should know, when she pulls away, is she in a sense continuing the pattern that is set in this episode?

The interesting twist is the invisible girl being recruited by the government and training in an assassin school full of invisible kids. Again, Joss left an aha that could be picked up again later (Teacher's Pet, the larvae in the closet? Same thing. I think there was one other, too, but I can't recall what) He doesn't ever develop those further, but he was apparently keeping his options open. And the odd government tie-in? How did they know about the girl and related issues? That at least sets a precedence for season 4, when the military's experiment is the Big Bad. We now have a history of government interest in the Hellmouth.