The Mayor-centric Buffy Episode Guide
"Homecoming"
(11/3/98) -- Buffy and Cordelia
are having a no-holds-barred battle to become
the Homecoming Queen. Unfortunately the
vampire Mr. Trick decides to turn the
competition into "Slayerfest '98" an
assassination-game style hunt in which
various
vamps and villians hunt Buffy and Cordy.
Meanwhile, the Mayor takes an interest in the
deathmatch and arranges a meeting/kidnapping
of Mr. Trick, to introduce himself as the
real power in town.
Mayor
Scenes: Harry Groener appears in
only two,
bookending the rest of the episode. Most of
the early eps only focused on the Mayor at
the beginning and end of the show. This was
the debut of Mayor Wilkins (in the flesh,
anyway, not just as a vague reference), and
he certainly knows how to make an entrance.
In the first scene he's established as a
slightly weird anti-germ politician, but
it's obvious he's something more sinister by
the way he terrifies his poor deputy mayor,
and in the end when he tells Mr. Trick he not
only knows about vampires but is on their
side, it's clear we're dealing with one bad
bad guy. Stay tuned.
"Band Candy"
(11/10/98) -- All the adults in
Sunnydale revert to teenage behavior after
downing the school fundraiser candy bars.
Buffy and friends uncover a plot to get the
adults out of the way while babies are stolen
for an evil sacrifice (they were rescued,
natch), a plot orchestrated, of course, by
his wickedness the Mayor.
Mayor
Scenes: Following the formula,
Harry appears
at the beginning and end, first to set up the
plot with Mr. Trick (and to root around in
his shrunken head cabinet); then at the end
to oversee the failed sacrifice, and to
chew out Mr. Trick after the plan falls
through. Harry's creepiest episode yet, he's
absolutely ghoulish talking on his cell phone
during the sacrifice, though I really liked
when he was threatening Mr. Trick. It turns
out the whole thing was a tribute for a demon
who is torched by Buffy in the end...and the
Mayor is none too happy with this turn of
events.
"Lovers Walk"
(11/24/98) -- An episode
revolving around the vampire Spike's
desperate measures to win back his lady love
Drusilla, and the Scooby gang's efforts to
keep him from killing everyone in order to do
it.
Mayor
Scenes: Only one, in his office,
discussing
with the deputy mayor what to do about Spike,
who caused some "shenanigans" last time he
was in town. We find out that the Mayor's
sold his soul in order to get where he is
today, but that's about it as far as his plot
development. This episode is such a
Spike-fest, Drusilla's not even in it.
You Can Quote Him On
That: "This year is too important
to let a loose cannon rock the boat...loose
cannon, rock the boat -- is that a mixed
metaphor? Boats did have cannons. And
a loose one would cause it to
rock..."
"Gingerbread"
(1/12/99) -- Two children are
murdered in a cult-style killing, and Buffy's
mother is deeply affected by it, spearheading
an anti-occult movement with the other
parents. It turns out, however, that the
whole thing is part of a plot to get rid of
Buffy and co.
Mayor
Scenes: Again, only one; the Mayor
does the
upstanding- citizen thing at a town meeting
when he denounces the killing. Still some
debate as to whether he orchestrated the
"killings" in the first place.
"Bad
Girls"
(2/9/99) -- The wild-child Slayer
Faith pulls Buffy into her world of parties,
lawbreaking, and her mantra of "want, take,
have". It's all fun and games until somebody
gets killed, and that somebody is none other
than poor deputy mayor Finch. Meanwhile the
grossly obese demon Balthazar is hunting for
an amulet, partly to make himself powerful
and partly to keep it away from the Mayor,
who, as Lard Demon tells Buffy with his dying
breath, "when HE rises, you'll wish I'd
killed you all." Indeed, the Mayor is rising
toward something terrible: he performs an
occult ceremony and orders Mr. Trick to let a
sword-wielding vampire loose on him. The
vamp immediately lodges his sword in the
Mayor's head -- which heals together almost
instantly. The Mayor has become invincible
and cannot be harmed for a hundred days until
the Ascension.
Mayor
Scenes: Wow, three this time.
Definately the coolest is Harry's splitting
headache scene (ha ha!) though my Southern
Baptist side had a difficult time dealing
with the pentacle- worshipping bit. (Of
course, if I listened to my churchgoing side
I'd never see any good television. ;-) ) A
very cool episode all around, and a nice
present after the drought of the past few
shows.
"Consequences"
(2/16/99) -- The murder of Finch is
weighing heavily on Buffy's conscience, while
Faith seems not to care either way. The
Mayor, meanwhile, finds that Finch was
keeping files on his activities and promptly
goes about shredding them. The news that a
Slayer may have done the killing makes
Wilkins very happy -- it means he can go
after the Slayers legally now. After much
painful confrontation, though, (and the
dusting of Mr. Trick,) Faith makes the job
easy -- she bails from the side of the good
guys and turns up at the Mayor's door,
offering her services.
Mayor
Scenes: At first I blew right over this episode because of the conspicuous lack of Mayor (three scenes and holding) but over time I came to appreciate it. An extremely dark and tense show, we get to watch the spectacle of Faith and the steady downward spiral of her soul. Eliza Dushku is a really good actress for being eighteen years old. She makes Faith totally harrowing and sympathetic at once, making her the first character on Buffy (after the Mayor) that I found myself caring about. And at the end, she joins up with him!! I was cheering at the screen -- well, after scraping off the gooseflesh. :)
"Doppelgangland"
2/23/99 -- A fun episode about the
genie Anya bringing the vampire Willow from
the alternate universe Sunnydale.
Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the
Mayor or the Ascension.
Mayor
Scenes: Only one!! He presents
Faith with a groovy new apartment (and a
Playstation!) as a "present" for switching
sides. A creepy-cute scene where he fends off
the oversexed Faith with, "Now, Faith, stop
that. I'm a family man." The Mayor has
kids?! Now there's a scary thought.
"Enemies" (3/16/99)
-- Now we're talkin'! Faith gets
reaccepted (sort of) to the Buffy gang, but
no one knows she's now working for the Mayor.
She and he plot to rob Buffy's vampire
boyfriend Angel of his soul, hoping he'll
kill Buffy. The Mayor calls in a strange
hooded being in for the job,
unleashing "Angelus", the evil Angel back on
the world. The new couple proceed to kidnap
Buffy, but in the end...well, I won't spoil
it for those who haven't seen it. Let's just
say trickery abounds. :) 
Mayor
Scenes: So far my favorite
episode, not just because Harry's in almost
every scene (but it helps!) The Mayor has
adopted the role of Faith's "daddy", playing
indulgent father figure to her pouting, sulky
brat persona. He's playing her like a
fiddle; I think he plans on ultimately
turning her to ashes with the rest of
Sunnydale on Ascension Day, but you never
know. Part of the fun is he acts like he's
really enjoying playing daddy. You can't
tell whether he's faking or not. If he is
he's having even more fun faking, which makes
him even scarier. The last scene is classic:
"Two words that'll take all the pain away.
Miniature...golf." And this little cat falls
down laughing.
You Can Quote Him On
That: "Now, first you load up on
calcium. Then find this demon, kill the heck
out of him, and bring the books to me."
"Choices" 5/4/99
-- Buffy comes to realize that as
long as she is the Slayer, her hopes of
leaving Sunnydale and having any kind of
future are unlikely. With this in mind she
launches an offensive against the Mayor, who
is awaiting a magical box which will aid his
Ascension.
Mayor
Scenes: Almost every other one.
This is a great showcase for Harry. He
shifts from his recent cutesy dadliness to
take stern command of his pet Slayer Faith,
who seems awfully whipped in this ep. We find
out about the Mayor's wife: Edna Mae, whom he
married in 1903 (or 1803??) and whom he
wistfully remembers being with "up to the
end". We also hear about his Irish Setter
Rusty. (No mention of what happened to
Rusty...yikes.) And the "evil" evil mayor is
back, rather than the "evil lite" mayor we've
been seeing. He still does the charming
thing, but he can go from charming to
chilling in a heartbeat. Harry is really
great at playing sadist. He gets the best
speech of the show when he taunts Angel and
Buffy mercilessly about their doomed romance;
talks about killing Buffy like a dog; gives
Faith a really big knife and
encourages her to use it; and busts up some
furniture to boot. All in all a pretty great
episode. It's only depressing that it's one
of the last ones.
You Can Quote Him On
That: "Well, what would Toll House
cookies be without the chocolate chips? A
pretty darn big disappointment, I can tell
you!" "Raise your hand if you're
invulnerable."
"Graduation Day Part 1"
5/18/99 -- As graduation (and the
Ascension) approaches, Buffy and friends
wonder if they'll live to see college.
Things get grimmer when they discover who the
commencement speaker will be (guess who), and
when Anya the genie tells the gang that she
witnessed an Ascension 800 years ago.
Meanwhile Angel is shot down by a poisoned
arrow and lies near death. The only thing
that will save him is to drain a Slayer's
blood, which prompts Buffy to come gunning
for his shooter -- Faith. After a fierce
rooftop battle, Buffy suceeds in stabbing
Faith, but Faith leaps from the roof into a
truck headed out of town.
Mayor Scenes:
Five, and they're all home runs.
Adorable father/daughter moments with Faith,
which are creepy simply because you have no
idea what the Mayor is thinking -- is he
planning to kill her? Does he really care
about her? Is he seeing Edna Mae when he
looks at her in that dress? This is followed
by a really wicked confrontation in the
library, the gang's inner sanctum, where he
threatens to eat Buffy and promises the
others that their deaths will be quick. And
of course, let's not forget the icky-bleagh
bug-eating scene (for Groener's sake, I hope
those were crab legs).
You Can Quote Him On
That: "That's one spunky little
girl you've raised...I'm going to eat her."
"Graduation Day Part 2"
sched. 5/25/99, aired 7/13/99 --
With Faith's body gone with the truck, Buffy
realizes Angel's only hope is to drink
Buffy's blood. He drinks enough that she
falls into a coma and is taken to the
hospital -- the same hospital where a
grief-stricken Mayor has taken the comatose
Faith. Realizing that Buffy is in the next
room, the Mayor attempts to kill Buffy, but
is
stopped by Angel. Threatening to deal a
world of pain to Buffy and Angel, he leaves,
promising a second act. Meanwhile in a
coma-dream, Buffy sees Faith, and the second
Slayer clues Buffy into the Mayor's "human
weakness". Waking from her coma, Buffy
understands what needs to be done and gets
the Slayerettes together for a battle plan.
At the same time, the Mayor is briefing his
vampire minions on the Graduation layout,
telling them to kill, not feed... "-- and
boys? Let's watch the swearing." The day
of Graduation begins and the class of '99
assembles before a stage. Principal Snyder
grumpily introduces the Mayor, who launches
into a seemingly dull but deeply
meaning-laced speech. "There's been grief.
There's been loss. Some people who should be
here today, aren't," he notes darkly, giving
Buffy a good hard stare. "But we are."
Suddenly a shadow falls over his face as the
sun is eclipsed from the sky. The second it
goes completely dark the Mayor is doubled
over by a gut-wrenching pain. The Gavrok
bugs are doing their work, and to the horror
of the senior class, the Mayor morphs into a
thirty-foot-tall skull- faced serpent. The
beast immediately starts lunching on the
guests, one of them being the irate Principal
Snyder. The graduating class tries to flee
the scene, but they are boxed in by the
Mayor's vamps. But the vamps are in for a
surprise -- the senior class is armed to the
teeth with crosses, stakes, bows, arrows,
flamethowers, ect. As the battle rages,
Buffy gets the serpent's attention with
Faith's gift knife, still covered in Faith's
blood. "You wanna get it back from
me?...Dick?" taunts Buffy. The
serpent falls for it, chasing her over the
grounds into the school, crashing through
walls into the library -- which is packed
with gunpowder and fertilizer. The serpent
realizes his mistake -- "Well, gosh!!" -- as
outside Giles hits the plunger; and the
serpent, the library and most of the school
explodes into flames.
Mayor
Scenes:
I've said it before, and
I'll say it again: God, how depressing. I
know, I know, they had to kill him
eventually, but...gosh. Delayed by
network sensitivity and hyped to the status
of the new Star Wars flick, it was
difficult for this episode to live up to
expectations. Harry Groener was the best
thing in it, as was often the case this year.
It takes a few viewings to realize how many
emotions the Mayor warp-speeds through during
the hospital scene: shock, murderous rage,
anguish, and vengefulness, all in less than
five minutes. Gawd. Someone pleeze
hand this man an Emmy!! Needless to say, my personal favorite part was the revelation that, at the end of the day, the Mayor did genuinely care about Faith. Like many others, I was sure that he would ultimately turn on her in the end, and it was a pleasant, bittersweet surprise to see otherwise. Which is why her part in Buffy's dream seems so out of place. Faith seemed to be enjoying the Mayor's attentions as much as he enjoyed giving them; why would she sell him out? Of course that leads to the whole question of whether it was actually Faith in Buffy's dream in the first place, but that's an argument I won't touch here. Another part that
got me was when the Mayor briefs the vamps on
the battle plan and jokes about the speech
he's been writing for a hundred years -- but
for once, he's so down he can barely bring
himself to laugh. It's the eve of the day
he's been looking forward to his whole
unnatural life, and without Faith, he can't
even enjoy it. The end came too quickly for
me, I personally felt the whole battle scene
could have used more....I don't know,
more. The actual serpent itself
didn't seem that impressive. Remember, this
thing took up four pages in that demon book.
Would he have become larger if he'd eaten
more students? We'll never know. In the
end, it's disappointing all around simply
because it's over. No more looking forward
to Tuesday nights for a Mayor fix. Fudge.
Rest in peace, you villainous fiend you,
wherever you are.
"This Year's Girl"
(2/22/00) -- First a little back story: Buffy and pals have moved on to UC Sunnydale, fighting vamps, demons and a sinister organization called the Initiative, which has created a cyborg-demon-man called Adam. Buffy has her hands full looking for the escaped creature, but her troubles are about to get worse: in her coma, Faith is dreaming. In a pleasant park Faith picnics with the Mayor, having a sweet old time before Buffy comes along and brutally knifes him. Horrified, Faith runs from the dark and murderous Buffy, running into a graveyard and hiding in an open grave. Buffy jumps in and Faith is the only one who emerges from the grave as rain starts to fall. In real life, Faith wakes up. She leaves her bed, finds a girl and discovers from her that eight months have passed and the Mayor is long dead. Knocking out the girl and stealing her clothes, Faith sets out for revenge on Buffy. Her first confrontation with the college girl is broken up by the police, and after roaming the streets, Faith is approached by a demon with a package. Killing the demon, she finds a video tape and a box from the Mayor. Faith breaks into a TV store and watches the tape, in which the Mayor tells her that if she's seeing this, he must be dead (very Mission Impossible of him). He tells her that without him to watch out for her there won't be a place in the world for her anymore, and the gift he's left in the box should help her go out with a bang. Opening the box, Faith finds a bizarre palm-fitting device. Armed with this, she breaks into Buffy's mother's house and torments Joyce, about to kill her when Buffy crashes in. The two Slayers engage in a lengthy, vicious battle, during which Faith grabs Buffy's hand. The palm device glows and suddenly Buffy knocks Faith unconscious, smashing the device. When Joyce asks Buffy if she's okay, Buffy replies softly, "Five by five" -- and an insane glint comes into her eyes. Faith has switched bodies with Buffy.
Mayor Scenes: Two very brief, but very heartbreaking appearances from the man. I personally think the videotape scene is the absolute best Mayor scene ever on the show, not without subvervivness but still very sad, and very sweet. Now if only Mayor Wilkins could keep showing up as Faith's Obi-Wan Kenobi every few episodes....
It's come to my attention that Faith fans, in the main,
don't seem to like the Mayor much. I'm not sure why
this is. Maybe it's because they feel he's to blame
for her descent into evil, maybe they're jealous of
him taking her away from Buffy. Whatever. Let me
pose a theory, though: whatever else the Mayor was,
it's more than fair to say he was Faith's earliest
introduction to real trust and love. There's a rumor
that Faith may eventually set on a path of redemption
when she crosses over to Angel's show this season.
Whether it ends up being Buffy, Angel, or Faith
herself that brings her into the light, none of it -- I say none of it --
would have been possible without the Mayor. I
believe Faith would never have let herself trust
anyone again if not for that glimpse of kindness
that came, ironically, from one of the evillest
evil guys in the Buffyverse.
And that's all I have
to say about that. :)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and all characters, names, images, ect. are
property
of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar, Fox and Warner
Bros. No copyright infringment is
intended.
City Hall ~~
Edna Mae ~~
Images ~~
LaVelle's ~~
Records ~~
Dungeon ~~
Faith and Shuv ~~
Music ~~
>^..^<
