Hush (Buffy episode)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode | |
|---|---|
| “Hush” | |
 |
|
| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 10 |
| Guest star(s) | Marc Blucas (Riley Finn) Emma Caulfield (Anya) Leonard Roberts (Forrest Gates) Phina Oruche (Olivia) Doug Jones (Lead Gentleman) Amber Benson (Tara) Lindsay Crouse (Professor Maggie Walsh) |
| Writer(s) | Joss Whedon |
| Director | Joss Whedon |
| Production no. | 4ABB10 |
| Original airdate | December 14th 1999 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Something Blue" | "Doomed" |
"Hush" is the 10th episode of season 4 of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See also List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.
Contents |
[edit] Plot synopsis
[edit] Summary
The Gentlemen steal the voices of the population of Sunnydale, rendering everyone in the town (including the Scooby Gang) unable to speak. Sunnydale is under a quarantine caused by the "mysterious" lost voices.
The Gentlemen, accompanied by The Footmen, wearing un-tied straitjackets, are trying to gather together seven human hearts from the residents of Sunnydale, who, of course, cannot scream or alert anyone to their being attacked and can't leave the city. Using an overhead projector, music, and drawings, Giles reveals that the only thing that can defeat The Gentleman is a real human scream, so the focus turns to how Buffy can regain her voice.
[edit] Expanded overview
Professor Walsh talks about communication in class and then asks Buffy to come and lie on her desk for a demonstration. Riley steps forward and kisses Buffy, then the sun goes down and it is night. Buffy hears a young girl's voice and walks out of the classroom and into the halls where a girl holding a small box stands chanting a rather disturbing nursery rhyme.
- Can't even shout, can't even cry
- The Gentlemen are coming by.
- Looking in windows, knocking on doors,
- They need to take seven and they might take yours.
- Can't call to mom, can't say a word,
- You're gonna die screaming but you won't be heard.
Buffy wakes up to see she was dreaming in class. As they're leaving, Riley overhears Buffy and Willow talking about a dream, and then Willow leaves them to talk (and ostensibly kiss). Riley inquires about Buffy's dream and then they talk about their plans for the night. Both make up excuses for their real plans and part ways, visibly unsatisfied.
Giles receives a phone call from Buffy and tries to research the information she gained from her dream about the Gentlemen. Spike makes himself very comfortable at Giles' place and complains about there not being any more Weetabix, (despite having eaten it all himself - again,) since Spike claims he likes the occasional adding of Weetabix to his butcher's blood for texture. Repulsed by the mental image, Giles tells him to go and get some himself.
Xander and Anya arrive, arguing about whether Xander really loves her, (Xander can't vocalise the way he feels, and Anya feels that the only reason he's interested in her is sex,) and Giles informs Xander that he has to keep Spike with him for a few days because an old girlfriend of his will be coming over from England. None of them are particularly pleased about the arrangement: Xander can't trust Spike to be in the same room as him without restraints, and Spike doesn't particularly want to be around Xander or Anya, especially if they intend to be intimate with him tied to a chair in the same room. The three argue back and forth with Giles wearily in the middle.
Willow goes to her Wicca meeting but soon finds that all the girls in it are just wannabe Wiccas with no knowledge of real magicks. One girl, Tara, seems to be interested in magic, but she is shy and quiet, and easily cowed by the other members. After the meeting, Buffy and Willow chat about how things are going slowly with Riley while Riley discusses the same with Forrest; both conclude that the reason they cannot progress their relationship is because of their inability to reveal their true identities to each other.
That night, before going to bed, Xander ties Spike down to a chair in his bedroom, even though Spike claims he wouldn't want to bite him even if he could. After some back-and-forth banter, Spike starts talking continually in an exaggerated imitation of Anya to annoy Xander. Olivia shows up at Giles' apartment, and after some brief talking they get right to kissing. At the clock tower, one of the Gentlemen opens a box, and the voices of all the people in Sunnydale float out from them and are drawn into the box.
When Buffy and Willow wake up the next morning and find they have no voices, they panic. Leaving their room, they see that nobody else in the dorms can speak, either. Xander, similarly panicked, blames Spike for it, only to receive a reversed victory salute. Riley and Forrest try to enter the underground lab, but without his voice Riley cannot activate the voice-based security system on the elevator door. Professor Walsh opens the elevator and they are cowed when they find that there was a sign saying they should have used the stairs in the event of emergencies.
Buffy and Willow walk through the town, seeing that everything is closed down, except for bars and liquor stores. An open-air (and silent) church service suggests fear of this being the end of the world. Armed with dry-erase boards to write down their words, Buffy and Willow show up at Giles' and meet with everyone else. The news states that everyone in Sunnydale has come down with a case of laryngitis and the town has been quarantined. The threat of chaos looming that night, Buffy goes out to patrol, and Professor Walsh sends Riley and his team out incognito to maintain order. Riley and Buffy meet while walking out on the streets and as Riley is about to leave, he turns and kisses Buffy for the first time. Olivia wakes up in the middle of the night, and through the window she spies one of the Gentlemen, who travel by floating a foot in the air with their demon assistants, the Footmen, following on the ground.
A couple of the Gentlemen travel through the dorms of U.C. Sunnydale until they find a freshman boy. The demon assistants hold the boy down while they cut out his heart. The next morning, Olivia draws a picture of the creature she saw, and when Giles recognizes it, and reads of a spate of peculiar murders, he gets out a book of fairy tales. In one of the lecture rooms at the college, Giles tells the story of the Gentlemen through drawings and text on an overhead projector, with musical embellishment. The sound of a real human scream — not a recorded one, despite Willow's suggestion — can kill them, so they take away everyone's voices, allowing them to get the seven human hearts they need. Riley suits up and then goes out to patrol, while Buffy prepares to do the same.
Tara from the Wicca group tries to get to Willow's dorm when the Gentlemen chase after her. She finally makes it to Willow's dorm and the two girls make a run for it. Riley is attacked by several of the Gentlemen's demon assistants in the clock tower, until Buffy shows up and starts fighting alongside him. The two are first shocked to see each other, but have neither time nor the ability to speak about it.
Spike gets a mug of blood out of the fridge at Giles' house and vamps out in the process of drinking it. As he's bending down to pick up some dropped books by the sofa, Xander sees this from a different angle and thinks that Spike is biting Anya. Xander attacks Spike and punches him several times before Anya and Giles stop him. He then kisses her passionately, and, realising he does indeed love her, Anya suggests they go back to their place.
Hiding in a laundry room, Willow and Tara combine their powers to move a vending machine in front of a door to protect them from the Gentlemen. Buffy gets caught by the Igor-like Footmen and the Gentlemen are about to cut into her when Riley shoots them with bolts of electricity. They fight and one of the demons grabs Buffy as she spots the box of voices on the table and recognizes it from her dream. She points it out to Riley and, after one false try, he smashes the box and everyone's voice is returned. Buffy lets out a loud and long scream, which causes the Gentlemen's heads to explode in a shower of green slime.
The next day, Willow and Tara talk about being real witches, while Giles and Olivia talk about how many scary things there really are in the world. Riley goes to Buffy's dorm to talk, but neither know what to say.
[edit] Writing and acting
- This episode earned Buffy its first Emmy nomination (for best original writing), but did not win.
- Actor and former personal assistant to Joss Whedon Andy Hallett appeared as an extra in the opening classroom scene of this episode. He would later go on to play Lorne (also known as "The Host") in the Buffy spin-off Angel.
[edit] Production details
- This episode contains very little actual dialog. The actors succeed in expressing the storyline without using words, and the "background" music also plays a huge role in the critical success of the episode.
- The gentlemen monsters in this episode look similar to the Der Kindestod monster seen in Season 2's "Killed by Death". The Season 3 episode "Gingerbread" also made use of a monster inspired by/inspiring fairy tales.
- Christophe Beck mentions, on DVD interviews, that he thoroughly enjoyed the task of writing the episode's soundtrack; one scene also uses Camille Saint-Saëns's "Danse Macabre" to somewhat melodramatic effect.
[edit] Music
- Camille Saint-Saëns - "Danse Macabre"
- Christophe Beck - "Hush Suite"
[edit] Quotes and trivia
- The electro/shoegaze group, The Very Hush Hush, has alluded in interviews to receiving inspiration for their name from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, rather than the more obvious reference of the tag-line for L.A. Confidential ("Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush").
- Joss Whedon created this episode after hearing repeatedly that the crucial part of his series was the dialogue.
- Joss Whedon wanted "The Gentleman" to be very nightmarish, hoping that they would be a monster children would remember being scared of later in their lives.
- The original rating of "Hush" received 6.6 million viewers, the highest rated episode of the season.
- For Halloween Horror Nights 15, Universal Orlando created a haunted maze based off the episode titled "The Body Collectors". The Gentlemen's masks and costumes along with the Footmen (or Workers, as they were titled) were all practical copies of the Buffy episode, however the storyline revolved around the men collecting bodies instead of voices and dismembering them.
- At the time, Tony Head had a recurring role in the BBC drama series Jonathan Creek, which uses Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre as its main title theme. Joss Whedon has stated that the use of Danse Macabre in a scene largely presided over by Giles was coincidental.
[edit] Continuity
[edit] Arc significance
The episode is notable for containing the start of Buffy's relationship with Riley and each character's discovery that the other is not what they seem — again playing out the theme of the characters' inability to communicate with each other. At the start of the episode, it is made clear that each character is attracted to the other, but neither knows how to broach the issue. Equally, neither character knows of the other's "secret identity" — that Buffy is a vampire slayer and that Riley also slays demons and vampires, for the US government.
Whilst muted by The Gentlemen's magic, the two characters run into each other and enjoy their first kiss. Subsequently, whilst fighting The Gentlemen and their goons, they encounter each other again, their mutual secrets revealed. Similarly, Anya and Xander start the episode arguing, as Anya believes Xander does not love her; later, though, his actions when he believes Spike has bitten her resolve her doubts.
That the episode is all about communication is highlighted when Buffy and Riley sit down to talk about their feelings for each other and their respective secrets, once The Gentlemen have been vanquished, and they sit in uncomfortable silence until the credits start.
This is also the episode where Willow's girlfriend Tara Maclay first appears. Willow's homosexuality had first been hinted at in the Season 3 episode "Doppelgängland".
[edit] Timing
- Stories that take place around the same time in the Buffyverse:
| Location, time (if known) |
Buffyverse chronology: Fall 1999 - December 1999 (non-canon = italic) |
|---|---|
| L.A. 1999 | Angel comic: Doyle: Spotlight |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.01 City of |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.01 The Freshman |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.02 Living Conditions |
| L.A. 1999 | |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.02 Lonely Hearts |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.00 Unaired Angel pilot |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Not Forgotten |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.03 The Harsh Light of Day |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.03 In the Dark |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.04 Fear, Itself |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Buffy graphic novel: Blood of Carthage |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel graphic novel: Surrogates |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel comic: Strange Bedfellows story, Angel #4 |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Buffy video game: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Game Boy Color) |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Tales of the Slayer: All That You Do Comes Back.. |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.04 I Fall to Pieces |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.05 Beer Bad |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.05 Rm w/a Vu |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Buffy books: Lost Slayer series |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.06 Wild at Heart |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Buffy graphic novel: Oz |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | Buffy book: Oz: Into the Wild |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.06 Sense & Sensitivity |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.07 The Initiative |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.07 Bachelor Party |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Close to the Ground |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Soul Trade |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel graphic novel: Earthly Possessions |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Redemption |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Shakedown |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Hollywood Noir |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Avatar |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: Bruja |
| L.A. 1999 | Angel book: The Summoned |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.08 Pangs |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.08 I Will Remember You |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.09 Something Blue |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.09 Hero |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.10 Hush |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.10 Parting Gifts |
| Sunnydale, 1999 | B4.11 Doomed |
| L.A. 1999 | A1.11 Somnambulist |
[edit] External links
- Soulful Spike Society analysis of Hush
- BBC episode guide to "Hush"
- BuffyGuide.com episode guide to "Hush"
- Buffy Body Count synopsis of "Hush"
- Doug Jones - the Lead Gentleman
- Horror Nights "Hush" maze- The Body Collectors
- Photos from "Hush" maze- The Body Collectors
