Getting To The Bottom Of The Bottle: 25 Best Bottle Episodes

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Buffy The Vampire Slayer – “Older And Far Away”

Bad birthdays had become a Buffy tradition by the time the sixth season rolled around. In “Older And Far Away,” it wasn’t even the demons and monsters that were the problem, even though there was a few of those too. It was the gang being forced into togetherness after Dawn inadvertently unleashed a demon.  After she wished they could all stay with her, they are trapped in Buffy’s house, forced to deal with each other without the ability to leave.

The demon is the least of their worries since their all-night confinement is forcing a lot of existing tensions to bubble to the surface. In this disastrous birthday, Buffy is forced to confront her star-crossed tryst with Spike, Willow has to see Tara for the first time post-break up, and Dawn is perpetually a third wheel and at her most obnoxious.

In theory, this episode is meant to focus on Dawn’s feelings of neglect and loneliness since their mother died, but in execution, it got mired down in a character that nobody really cared about, and robbed fans of the chance to sink their teeth further into the Buffy/Spike conundrum. Dawn never fully materialized as an empathetic character, but she was often a handy plot device to motivate Buffy into some pretty heroic things. Although, she probably would have done them anyway – she is the Slayer, after all.