Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) by Gilene Yeffeth Page B

course, the Passage of Disbelief is only half of the Elastic Trespass.With every monster that emerges from the Hellmouth, the elastic of reality is stretched out of shape, and according to the rules it must snap back to normalcy. After each resolved crisis—the monster slain, the spell reversed—comes the inevitable Cover-Up. All evidence must be erased. (Famously, the original Scooby Gang of Scooby-Doo never needed a Cover-Up, invariably discovering that there were no real mystical forces at work. It was always just “old Mr. Withers the caretaker, trying to scare folks away.” 2 )
    Buffy knowingly underplays its Cover-Ups, trotting out genre clichés without much time wasted on believability. At the end of “Harvest” (1-2), Cordelia recounts the rumors meant to explain the mass vampire attack at the Bronze. “Well, I heard it was rival gangs, you know, fighting for turf. But all I can tell you is they were in an ugly way of looking . . . I mean, I don’t even remember that much, but I tell you it was a freak show.” Moments later, Giles provides, “People have a tendency to rationalize what they can, and forget what they can’t.”
    Memory repression is a frequent device, but even such tenuous Cover-Ups aren’t always in earnest. In “The Pack” (1-6), Xander claims to be unable to remember his experiences when possessed by a hyena spirit (particularly his attempted seduction/rape of Buffy, one suspects). But Giles comes to doubt his story.
     
         G ILES : “I’ve been reading up on my animal possession, and I cannot find anything anywhere about memory loss afterwards.”
         X ANDER : “Did you tell them [Buffy and Willow] that?”
         G ILES : “Your secret dies with me.”
    In the climax of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” (3-16), after Xander is saved from an adoring but violent horde of love-spell-bedazzled women at the last minute, Cordelia offers the gathered crowd this stunningly lame Cover-Up line: “Boy, that was the best scavenger hunt ever.” In the next scene, Buffy rolls her eyes at this one.
     
         B UFFY : “Scavenger hunt?”
         X ANDER : “Your mom seemed to buy it.”
         B UFFY : “So she says. I think that she’s just so wigged at hitting on one of my friends that she’s repressing. She’s getting pretty good at that. I should probably start worrying . . .”
    More often, the Cover-Up is left to entities other than the Scooby Gang. As early as “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” (1-11), government agents show up to take the invisible girl away for covert ops training. And in “School Hard” (2-3), maintaining the secrets of the Hellmouth becomes a matter for local Sunnydale officials. Parent-teacher night is invaded by Spike and his gang, and Principal Snyder barely survives, coming into close contact with the vampires. It seems as if there will be some hefty Covering-Up to do. But instead of Buffy making explanations and excuses, we overhear this exchange between the police chief and Snyder:
     
         C HIEF : “I need to say something to the media people.”
         S NYDER : “So?”
         C HIEF : “So? You want the usual story? Gang-related? PCP?”
         S NYDER : “What did you have in mind? The truth?”
         C HIEF : “Right. Gang-related. PCP.”
    This conversation not only neatly provides a Cover-Up, but again shows the fuzzy border between knowing and not-knowing in Buffy . If the chief of police recognizes a vampire attack when he sees one, then knowledge of the mystical must extend beyond the unspoken secrets of high school. After this scene viewers must ask themselves, How far up does this Cover-Up go?
    As we learn in the third season, adult awareness and even complicity goes all the way to City Hall. And, of course, in season four the federal government itself is implicated. (Presaged by government involvement in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” 1-11). As the wider world beyond Sunnydale